Terry Reedy wrote: > "Georg Brandl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >> tobiah wrote: >>> Suppose I fill an list with 100 million random integers in the range >>> of 1 - 65535. Wouldn't I save much memory if all of the ocurrances >>> of '12345' pointed to the same integer object? Why should more be made, >>> when they all do the same thing, and are not subject to change? >> >> Because for typical usage of integers (which doesn't include your >> example), >> it is more expensive to check if there's already an integer with that >> specific >> value out there than to create a new one. > > I am not sure what you are saying. Every (C) int is checked to see if it > is in the preallocated range before making a new Python int object. The > reason for the low limit is the various time-space tradeoffs applied across > the entire range of programs.
Maybe I phrased that misleadingly (expensive refering to memory space). In the end, I wanted to say the same thing you did: it's a tradeoff between space and time. Georg -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
