On Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:51:23 -0800, rishiyoor wrote: > When you say python automatically allocates memory, what would you do > if you don't know the size of the list of, say for example, the > nearest pairs between the two groups. I would probably iterate over > all the pairs and create a new list. I did a similar operation in > another program, but I had to initialize the list (statically) with x > = [0]*50 before I could use it in the for loop.
Only if you used an index instead of starting with an empty list and appending values to it. Or in simple cases a list comprehension might replace a ``for`` loop. "Bad" and "unpythonic" example: new = [0] * len(old) for i in xrange(len(old)): new[i] = do_something(old[i]) Better written as: new = list() for item in old: new.append(do_something(item)) Or as list comprehension: new = [do_something(item) for item in old] Or: new = map(do_something, old) Ciao, Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list