[Python-ideas] Length hinting and preallocation for container types

[Daniel Holth]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Le Fri, 8 Mar 2013 08:18:07 -0500,
> Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> a écrit :
>>
>> I am a fan of the proposal. Imagine you are programming for a
>> memory-constrained system. By telling the list how big it needs to be
>> you can save precious RAM.
>
> Is it an actual use case or are you just imagining it? :)
> I'm asking because, unless you are only allocating that list and all
> the objects contained it in it already exist, limiting the list's size
> won't do much for the process' memory occupation.

It might help if it was a list of integers between -1 and 99 and
1-character strings.