Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Implementing deque


Deques (pronounced decks) are list-like containers that have fast appending and pop values from either end. The name deque comes from this action: double-ended queues. Deques are thread safe, meaning data is manipulated in such a way that all threads behave without overwriting data or otherwise operate with unintended actions. Popped values from either end of the deque have the same performance, regardless of being on the front or the rear of the queue.

For those familiar with big O notation, performance is O(1) for both front- and rear-popped values. For those unfamiliar with big O notation, this just means it takes the same amount of time for a deque to pop a value from the front as it does for the back. This is significant because lists, which have similar operations as the deque, are optimized for quick, fixed-length operations and take a performance hit of O(n) to memory movement when popping and inserting values, as they both modify the size and position of the data...