[Baypiggies] identity cache / flywheel design pattern

[Monte Davidoff]

JJ,

Shannon -jj Behrens wrote:
> I'm have a program that intrinsically eats up a ton of memory.  I
> often read lines from a file that are the same, so I end up with
> multiple copies of the same data in memory.

It sounds like a job for the "intern" built-in function (from section 
2.2, Non-essential Built-in Functions, in the Python Library Reference).

 >>> s1 = intern("foo")
 >>> s2 = intern(''.join(['f', 'o', 'o']))
 >>> s1 == 'foo'
True
 >>> s1 == s2
True
 >>> s1 is s2
True
 >>>

Curious that your signature referred to Lisp, which has used the intern 
concept for decades! ;-)

Monte