save dictionary to a file without brackets.

[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Dave Angel <d at davea.name> wrote:
> On 08/09/2012 06:03 PM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>> O(n) for all other entries in the dict which suffer a hash collision
>> with the searched entry.
>>
>> True, a sensible choice of hash function will reduce n to 1 in common
>> cases, but it becomes an important consideration for larger datasets.
>
> I'm glad you're wrong for CPython's dictionaries.  The only time the
> lookup would degenerate to O[n] would be if the hash table had only one
> slot.  CPython sensibly increases the hash table size when it becomes
> too small for efficiency.
>
> Where have you seen dictionaries so poorly implemented?

In vanilla CPython up to version (I think) 3.3, where it's possible to
DoS the hash generator. Hash collisions are always possible, just
ridiculously unlikely unless deliberately exploited.

(And yes, I know an option was added to older versions to randomize
the hashes there too. It's not active by default, so "vanilla CPython"
is still vulnerable.)

ChrisA