"Tuples are for heterogeneous data, lists are for homogeneous data."

[Raymond Hettinger]

"Erik Max Francis" <max at alcyone.com> wrote in message
news:3E6EA691.E0E30AFC at alcyone.com...
> Arthur wrote:
>
> > The subject line is a Guido quote from today's dev list.
> >
> > Is the point Guido making performance related, or is it something
> > else? I
> > have used lists extensively for heterogenous data, and wonder what it
> > is I
> > am losing by so doing.
>
> Nothing, it's just a style guideline.  I'm aware of no optimizations
> that would provide a penalty for not using lists/tuples in this way.

It's a bit more than a style guideline, it reflects Guido's design intent
and is reflected in design decisions throughout python.  That is why
tuples don't have index() or count() methods.


Raymond Hettinger