I'm new to Python and curious what looks good and what doesn't. The function I have defined looks for pairs in a list of integers and tells the user whether or not any possible pair equals the target number. How can this code be more efficient or fast? import datetime from itertools import combinations def csop(*params): t1 = datetime.datetime.now() print params[0], params[1] for c in combinations(params[0],2): print sum(c) if sum(c) == params[1]: print 'Target number reached' t2 = datetime.datetime.now() print t2-t1 exit() else: pass To run: import csop csop.csop([1,2,3,4],5) The output should look something like this: <!-- language-all: lang-none --> [1, 2, 3, 4] 5 3 4 5 Target number reached 0:00:00.000071