Is An Element of a Sequence an Object?

[Steve D'Aprano]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2017 04:50 pm, Peter Otten wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:

>> In Python 3, for example:
>> 
>> 
>>>>> import sys
>>>>> sys.getsizeof("abcde")  # actual memory consumption
>> 54
>>>>> sum(sys.getsizeof(c) for c in "acbde")  # theoretical
>> 250
>> 
>> 
>> So we can tell the two implementations apart.
> 
> I str were implemented as a sequence of character objects it would still
> report
> 
>>>> sys.getsizeof(tuple("abcde"))
> 88
> 
> The tuple doesn't store objects either, it holds pointers to objects and
> could easily be changed to hold the values of small integers, say.

Perhaps; but calling getsizeof directly is not enough to report the full memory
usage of a collection. You need something like Raymond Hettinger's recursive
getsizeof:

code.activestate.com/recipes/577504/


Using that in Python 3.5 I get 174 bytes, and in 3.2 I get 204 bytes.


The specific values will differ according to the platform, the version, and the
implementation, but the conclusion should still holds.




-- 
Steve
“Cheer up,” they said, “things could be worse.” So I cheered up, and sure
enough, things got worse.