What is memoization and how can I use it in Python?

Question

I just started Python and I\'ve got no idea what memoization is and how to use it. Also, may I have a simplified example?

Answer 1

New to Python 3.2 is functools.lru_cache. By default, it only caches the 128 most recently used calls, but you can set the maxsize to None to indicate that the cache should never expire:

import functools

@functools.lru_cache(maxsize=None)
def fib(num):
    if num < 2:
        return num
    else:
        return fib(num-1) + fib(num-2)

This function by itself is very slow, try fib(36) and you will have to wait about ten seconds.

Adding lru_cache annotation ensures that if the function has been called recently for a particular value, it will not recompute that value, but use a cached previous result. In this case, it leads to a tremendous speed improvement, while the code is not cluttered with the details of caching.