Python “lists” are not lists. A history

Re:Python “lists” are not lists. A history by mwhooker on Friday December 06, 2013 @05:25AM (#6860394)

this is useless. In the python interface they are obviously lists. Is the author arguing that cpython implements them as C arrays? I don't know because the terms weren't defined.

If the author believes clarity will arise from pedantry, maybe he should start with wikipedia

> In computer science, a list or sequence is an abstract data type that implements a finite ordered collection of values, where the same value may occur more than once.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_(abstract_data_type)

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Re:Python “lists” are not lists. A history by unwind on Friday December 06, 2013 @05:42AM (#6860452)

I was about to post something very similiar.

There's nothing uniquely strange about Python's list type being backed by an array: that is even given its own type in Java (ArrayList: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/ArrayList... which implements List<> so it "is" a list).

I think the perhaps weirdest thing about Python's list API is that it supports indexing, which is rarely done on linked lists due to the cost involved. In Python I got the feeling that it's known/expected that indexing is fast.

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Re:Python “lists” are not lists. A history by jplayer01 on Friday December 06, 2013 @05:47AM (#6860463)

Well, he seems to be complaining about exactly that, "Python lists aren't lists because they're implemented internally as arrays". I agree that this article is pointless.

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