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

[Eli Bendersky]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 6:04 AM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.


That's not what you should use lists for if memory consumption matters. Use
http://docs.python.org/dev/library/array.html, especially if your integers
are in such a limited range.

Eli
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