Timing simple slicing vs itertools.pairwise

main.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from statistics import fmean
import timeit

times_slice = timeit.repeat(
    stmt="l = [924, -5, 24, 1, 0, 242, -5, 42, 5, 1, -9, 50, 3, 432, 0, -5, 4]; x = l[:-1]; y = l[1:]"
)

times_itertools = timeit.repeat(
    stmt="x, y = zip(*pairwise([924, -5, 24, 1, 0, 242, -5, 42, 5, 1, -9, 50, 3, 432, 0, -5, 4]))",
    setup="from itertools import pairwise",
)

print(f"times with slices: {fmean(times_slice)}")
print(f"times with itertools: {fmean(times_itertools)}")

Based on this question: https://stackoverflow.com/q/72018286/2081835.

Outputs are:

times with slices: 0.17377224136143923
times with itertools: 0.8396673248615116