Dictionary size/speed limit?

[Ken Seehof]

Michael Morrison wrote:

> I'm comtemplating a new program I'll be creating, and I plan on having a
> dictionary with around 20000-50000 entries.
>
> This dictionary will be searched many thousands of times itself, all at
> once.  ie. read a file with 20000 keys, find value in dictionary for each
> key.  (The dictionary size and file size have no relationship, and actually,
> the file size will probably be larger than the dictionary in some cases)
>
> So, is using the regular Python dictionary just an insane idea? :)  Should I
> create something in C to do this for me, or are there modules to do this
> sort of thing?
>
> Thanks,
> borlak

You don't have to decide yet.  Write it with python dictionaries.  Rewrite it
later in C if necessary.