1. Creating a copy of dictionary or lists.
Whenever you need to make a copy of a dictionary or list, do not simply use the assignment operator.
Right way: Use the copy()
or deepcopy()
method.
2. Dictionary keys.
Remember Boolean class is the subclass of Integer. Integer equivalent of True is 1 and that of False is 0. Hence value of key 1 is overwritten
3. Updating lists or dictionaries.
Most the sequence object methods like sort, update, append, add etc works in place to increase performance by avoiding to create a separate copy un-necessarily.
Do not try to assign the output of such methods to variable.
In some cases, python try to reuse the existing immutable objects. String interning is one such case
>>> a = "gmail"
>>> b = "gmail"
>>> a is b
True
All strings of length 1 are interned. String having anything except ASCII characters, digits and underscore in them are not interned.
Let's see.
>>> a = "@gmail"
>>> b = "@gmail"
>>> a is b
False
Also remember==
is different thanis
operator.==
checks if values are equal or not whileis
checks if both variable are pointing to same object.
5. Default arguments are evaluated only once.
Consider below example.
def func(a, lst=[]):
lst.append(a)
return lst print(func(1))
print(func(2))
What do you think will be the output of above two print statements?
Lets try to run it.
>>> def func(a, lst=[]):
... lst.append(a)
... return lst
...
>>> print(func(1))
[1]
>>> print(func(2))
[1, 2]