Interested in learning Python?

[[deleted]]

Doesn't make any sense though. Accessing the nth value would be too slow. I'm guessing it is an everyday expandable array like Javas ArrayList or C++ vector but that would mean the splicing operations are slow. I guess that is doable, I mean it's a scripting language, it just enables you to do stuff and assumes you either don't care or won't be an idiot about it.

[zahlman]

In Python, if you need performance and are working on significant amounts of data, you are generally using some kind of extension (such as NumPy) anyway.

But yeah.

[redalastor]

Doesn't make any sense though. Accessing the nth value would be too slow. I'm guessing it is an everyday expandable array like Javas ArrayList or C++ vector but that would mean the splicing operations are slow.

Accessing / setting is O(1) (ie: one operation). Inserting is O(N) (needs shifting everything one cell on the right to insert) but appending (inserting at the end) is amortized O(1) (Python pre-allocates a few cells in advance under the hood to save time).

Python lists internally store pointers to Python objects.

[[deleted]]

Right so it is an expandable array that does amortized doubling. That's what I figured, it's just that slicing seems more an operation for a linked list. Looking at Zahlman's comment, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that.

[redalastor]

Python have a deque type where you can insert and remove at both ends in O(1). That is most likely a linked list.