Dictionaries as records

[Bill Wilkinson]

"John Roth"
> Your records seem to average around 250 bytes, so that's about 16
> characters per field. Object overhead for each object is roughly the
> same as this (it might be larger, I haven't looked at the headers
> recently.)

Yes sir, about 250 bytes.  Here is some code that shows what I am confused
about. (Hoping my spaces don't get stripped out while being posted)
There is a big difference between the memory usage of the two sections of
code below. I can work around this, but I am a bit curious now.  It would be
nice to know why the second part below takes up so much ram (I think about
1.2k per rec?).

#A sample record that looks like the ones I use. Data obfuscated.
d = {"f":"kdfkjdkfjdkj",
    "g":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",
    "t":"kdjfkjdfkjdkjfkjdf",
    "u1":"kdjfkjdjdkjfkjdfjkdjf",
    "ii2":"kjdfkjdfjkdjfkjdfjdfj",
    "g3":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u4":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",
    "g5":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u6":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",
    "g7":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u8":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",
    "g9":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u10":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",
    "g11":"ldjfljdfkjdf",
    "u12":"dkfkjdfkjdfj",}

#Method 1
#Just make a bunch of copies of the same record again and again.
tbl = []
for x in range(15000):
    tbl.append(d.copy())

raw_input("Check your Ram usage then press enter")

#Method 2
#Ok, now change each record just a little bit.
#Hack off the last two chars from each field and
#add one new character. Then append the new record
#to the table.
tbl = []
for x in range(15000):
    t = d.copy()
    for k in t.keys():
        t[k] = t[k][:-2] + str(x)[-1]
    tbl.append(t.copy())
print "Now check your memory usage again."