How is Python's List Implemented?

Question

Is it a linked list, an array? I searched around and only found people guessing. My C knowledge isn\'t good enough to look at the source code.

Answer 1

It's a dynamic array. Practical proof: Indexing takes (of course with extremely small differences (0.0013 µsecs!)) the same time regardless of index:

...>python -m timeit --setup="x = [None]*1000" "x[500]"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0579 usec per loop

...>python -m timeit --setup="x = [None]*1000" "x[0]"
10000000 loops, best of 3: 0.0566 usec per loop

I would be astounded if IronPython or Jython used linked lists - they would ruin the performance of many many widely-used libraries built on the assumption that lists are dynamic arrays.