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Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 09:46:55 +0100
Subject: Re: Not able to store data to dictionary because of memory limitation
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
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On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 9:38 AM, Rama Rao Polneni <ramp99@gmail.com> wrote:
> Earlier I had many duplicate strings in different rows retrieved from database.
> I created a list to have unique strings and their indexes are used in
> actual computations. So lot of space is saved by having integers
> instead of strings.
>

What you're doing there is called "interning" the strings, and I think
it's the right thing to do. You can get the Python interpreter to do
this for you by simply passing the strings through the built-in
function intern() which will return a string with identical content.
(In Python 3, that function has been shoved off to a module, so it's
sys.intern() and you need to import sys.) You'll save some space and
improve dictionary performance, but you won't lose clarity.

Chris Angelico