[Python-Dev] The memo of pickle

[Guido van Rossum]

> pickle currently puts tuples into the memo on pickling, but only ever
> uses the position field ([0]), never the object itself ([1]).
> 
> I understand that the reference to the object is needed to keep it
> alive while pickling.
> 
> Unfortunately, this means one needs to allocate 36 bytes for the
> tuple.
> 
> I think this memory consumption could be reduced by saving the objects
> in a list, and only saving the position in the memo dictionary. That
> would save roughly 32 bytes per memoized object, assuming there is no
> malloc overhead.
> 
> What do you think?

Is it worth it?  Have you made a patch?  What use case are you
thinking of?

> Regards,
> Martin
> 
> P.S. It would be even more efficient if there was an identity
> dictionary.

Sorry, what's an identity dict?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)