Creating a List of Empty Lists

[Skip Montanaro]

    Python 2.3 (#46, Jul 29 2003, 18:54:32) [MSC v.1200 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
    >>> b = intern('foo bar')
    >>> a = 'foo bar'
    >>> a is 'foo bar'
    False
    >>> b is 'foo bar'
    False

    Emile> That apparent space requirement should really be better documented.

The fact that the current implementation of CPython automatically interns
strings which look like identifiers is simply an efficiency consideration.
It's not part of the language definition, so doesn't bear documenting.  The
correct way to compare two strings is using '==' (which is independent of
CPython's implementation details), not 'is'.

Skip