Hi, I am new to python and I miss some understanding of the internals of some types and containers. With my C/C++ background I hope to get some hints to chose the best data structure for my programs. Here are some questions:
- Is there a brief description (not source) how the types tuple, string, list and dict are represented internally. Is a list behind the scenes just a double linked list or an array or a mixture of these things? Is a dict a tree or a hash array and what is the collision mechanism? Is the string an array with some header info? - What is the big-O complexity of the most common algorithms for these types and containers? Is it O(n), O(n*log(n)) or O(n**2)? I mean inserting, appending (front or back), finding something and so on. - The same questions for important and common library containers if you can name some. - Is this information somewhere in the web? Why is it not written in the documentation? - When I want to use a representation of a game board like chess in C/C++ I use an array[64] or bigger of int or char for the pieces. What data structure or type would be useful in Python when the performance ist most important? Is it list or string or an array from a library or what else? Harald -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
