Correction. I've copy-pasted it wrong! array.array('i', (i, i+1, i+2, i +3, i+4, i+5, i+6)) was the best.
>>> for i in xrange(0, 1000000): d[unicode(i)] = (i, i+1, i+2, i+3, i+4, i+5, >>> i+6) 1000000 keys, ['VmPeak:\t 224704 kB', 'VmSize:\t 224704 kB'], 4.079240 seconds, 245143.698209 keys per second >>> for i in xrange(0, 1000000): d[unicode(i).encode('utf-8')] = (i, i+1, i+2, >>> i+3, i+4, i+5, i+6) 1000000 keys, ['VmPeak:\t 201440 kB', 'VmSize:\t 201440 kB'], 4.985136 seconds, 200596.331486 keys per second >>> for i in xrange(0, 1000000): d[unicode(i).encode('utf-8')] = >>> array.array('i', (i, i+1, i+2, i+3, i+4, i+5, i+6)) 1000000 keys, ['VmPeak:\t 125652 kB', 'VmSize:\t 125652 kB'], 3.572301 seconds, 279931.625282 keys per second -- Dmitry -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list