writing code over several lines

[Peter Hansen]

Alex Martelli wrote:
> 
> Peter Hansen wrote:
>    ...
> > They still have only four bytes (a pointer) per element, and surely for
> > any tuple or list where one could possibly be concerned about memory
> > consumption the number of elements far outweighs the overhead associated
> > with the structure itself (which is probably on the order of a few bytes
> > anyway).
> 
> One counterexample from the dark ages:
> 
> map(twoargsfunc, lotsoffirstargs, (onesecondarg,)*len(lotsoffirstargs))
> 
> the memory consumption of all the constructed tuple's elements is
> fixed -- sizeof(onesecondarg) if Python has sizeof (don't you wish...;-),
> as all slots in the tuple point to that one object.
> 
> So, here, the overhead of the structure itself might be important,
> since the elements in that structure aren't; so a tuple MAY be a good
> thing.

Certainly there are cases, such as your example and doubtless others.  

"Initializing constant lists at the beginning of the program" likely 
isn't one of them, except in exceptional cases.

-Peter