Python and STL efficiency

[bearophileHUGS at lycos.com]

Pebblestone:
> Sorry, I did some miscalculation.... what a shame.....

Don't worry.
For me using Py 2.4.3 those memory values are 4536 before and 20184 kb
after, it means a difference of 15648 kb, that equals to about 16023552
bytes, that equals to about 1000000 * 4 * 4. That means 4 bytes for
each string reference into the array. If you don't use Psyco the
starting memory value is quite lower.

If you don't use Psyco but you use the append, the values are 1384 and
18880, this means about 4.47 bytes / value, because python lists grow
geometrically, so there is some wasted space.

I find the memory used with PsList called from the Python script:
http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PsList.html

Bye,
bearophile