diff --git a/Doc/faq/design.rst b/Doc/faq/design.rst index 00ff1d108bb7a9..285c7f12b9c5e3 100644 --- a/Doc/faq/design.rst +++ b/Doc/faq/design.rst @@ -503,10 +503,10 @@ you can always change a list's elements. Only immutable elements can be used as dictionary keys, and hence only tuples and not lists can be used as keys. -How are lists implemented? --------------------------- +How are lists implemented in CPython? +------------------------------------- -Python's lists are really variable-length arrays, not Lisp-style linked lists. +CPython's lists are really variable-length arrays, not Lisp-style linked lists. The implementation uses a contiguous array of references to other objects, and keeps a pointer to this array and the array's length in a list head structure. @@ -519,10 +519,10 @@ when the array must be grown, some extra space is allocated so the next few times don't require an actual resize. -How are dictionaries implemented? ---------------------------------- +How are dictionaries implemented in CPython? +-------------------------------------------- -Python's dictionaries are implemented as resizable hash tables. Compared to +CPython's dictionaries are implemented as resizable hash tables. Compared to B-trees, this gives better performance for lookup (the most common operation by far) under most circumstances, and the implementation is simpler.