Many newbie questions regarding python

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-10-08, Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 2010-10-07, Rog??rio Brito <rbrito at ime.usp.br> wrote:
>
>> If possible, I would like to simply declare the list and fill it
>> latter in my program, as lazily as possible (this happens notoriously
>> when one is using a technique of programming called dynamic
>> programming where initializing all positions of a table may take too
>> much time in comparison to the filling of the array).
>
> At first you say you want a list, later you say you want an array.
> They're two different things.  Arrays are variable-length and can be
> heterogeneous.

I meant _Lists_ are fixed-length and homogeneous

> If what you really want is a fixed-length, homogeneous array, then
> use an array instead of a list:
>
> http://docs.python.org/library/array.html

Actually, that's not the right link either.  I was thinking more of
NumPy arrays, where you can create an arbitrary sized homogeneous
array of a desired type (either uninitialized or filled with zeros or
ones):

  http://www.scipy.org/Tentative_NumPy_Tutorial#head-d3f8e5fe9b903f3c3b2a5c0dfceb60d71602cf93

If you're crunching so many numbers that initializing a list is
a problem, then you probably ought to be using NumPy.
  
-- 
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