In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Graham> Looking up a key in a dictionary is done in constant-time, > Graham> i.e. it doesn't matter how large the dictionary is. > >Doesn't that depend on how many keys hash to the same value? For small >dictionaries keeping the max keys that hash to the same value small isn't a >huge problem. For large dictionaries (millions of keys) might you have some >long chains? Or in an effort to reduce the chain length, wind up using so >much virtual memory that you wind up wrecking performance by swapping?
If you're getting long hash chains, you're either using a bad hash function, or your table isn't big enough. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
