One nice thing about using longs is that it would fix this long-standing bug on 64-bit machines. Python 1.5.2+ (#1, Sep 2 1999, 14:43:56) [C] on osf1V4 Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam >>> import sys >>> sys.maxint 9223372036854775807 >>> [1] * sys.maxint []