[Python-Dev] Replacement for array.array('u')? (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Fri Mar 22 08:50:04 EDT 2019

On Fri, 22 Mar 2019 12:51:49 +0100 Stefan Behnel <stefan_ml at behnel.de> wrote:

Antoine Pitrou schrieb am 22.03.19 um 11:39: > On Fri, 22 Mar 2019 20:31:33 +1300 Greg Ewing wrote: >> A poster on comp.lang.python is asking about array.array('u'). >> He wants an efficient mutable collection of unicode characters >> that can be initialised from a string. > > TBH, I think anyone trying to use array.array should be directed to > Numpy these days. The only reason for array.array being here is that > it predates Numpy. Otherwise we'd never have added it.

Well, maybe it wouldn't get added these days anymore, with pip+PyPI nicely in place. But being there already, it makes for a nice and efficient "batteries included" list replacement for simple data that would otherwise waste a lot of object memory.

It's not really "batteries included". array.array() supports almost no useful operation. It's a bare-bones container for which you have to implement every useful feature by yourself.

(yes, you can use generic mutable sequence algorithms such as heapq or random.shuffle; how often do you need to heapify or shuffle an array of unicode codepoints?)

Also, when using a unicode array, there's no substantial win of memory compared to a single str object. You may be losing some actually, because of the flexible str representation.

Regards

Antoine.

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