How do I determine the size of an object in Python?

Question

I want to know how to get size of objects like a string, integer, etc. in Python.

Related question: How many bytes per element are there in a Python list (tuple)?

Answer 1

Python 3.8 (Q1 2019) will change some of the results of sys.getsizeof, as announced here by Raymond Hettinger:

Python containers are 8 bytes smaller on 64-bit builds.

tuple ()  48 -> 40       
list  []  64 ->56
set()    224 -> 216
dict  {} 240 -> 232

This comes after issue 33597 and Inada Naoki (methane)'s work around Compact PyGC_Head, and PR 7043

This idea reduces PyGC_Head size to two words.

Currently, PyGC_Head takes three words; gc_prev, gc_next, and gc_refcnt.

• gc_refcnt is used when collecting, for trial deletion.
• gc_prev is used for tracking and untracking.

So if we can avoid tracking/untracking while trial deletion, gc_prev and gc_refcnt can share same memory space.

See commit d5c875b:

Removed one Py_ssize_t member from PyGC_Head.
All GC tracked objects (e.g. tuple, list, dict) size is reduced 4 or 8 bytes.