python: class vs tuple huge memory overhead (?)

Question

I\'m storing a lot of complex data in tuples/lists, but would prefer to use small wrapper classes to make the data structures easier to understand, e.g.

class Pe         


        

Answer 1

Using __slots__ decreases the memory footprint quite a bit (from 1.7 GB to 625 MB in my test), since each instance no longer needs to hold a dict to store the attributes.

class Person:
    __slots__ = ['first', 'last']
    def __init__(self, first, last):
        self.first = first
        self.last = last

The drawback is that you can no longer add attributes to an instance after it is created; the class only provides memory for the attributes listed in the __slots__ attribute.