Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

Implementation details

Many programmers easily confuse Python's list type with the concept of linked lists which are found often in standard libraries of other languages, such as C, C++, or Java. In fact, CPython lists are not lists at all. In CPython, lists are implemented as variable length arrays. This should be also true for other implementations, such as Jython and IronPython, although such implementation details are often not documented in these projects. The reasons for such confusion is clear. This datatype is named list and also has an interface that could be expected from any linked list implementation.

Why it is important and what does it mean? Lists are one of the most popular data structures, and the way in which they are used ...