oop - what is implementation or execution Difference Between dictionary with keys as 0,1,2,.. and list in python

Question

li=[1,2]
dic={0:1,1:2}

print(li[0],dic[0])

I have executed following code, they give the same result, is there any implementation or execution or difference in the way the list and dictionary are stored in memory.

it was mentioned on lectures that Dictionary elements are directly accessed, so list takes more time while accessing elements in a huge list compared to a dictionary with keys 0,1,2 with same data as in the list.

Any reasons or confirming hypothesis would be helpful.

Thanks in advance, happy coding

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65838561/what-is-implementation-or-execution-difference-between-dictionary-with-keys-as-0

Answer 1

This is false. Both operations are O(1) (constant), and list access will typically be slightly faster:

from timeit import timeit

L = [0 for i in range(10**8)]
D = {i:0 for i in range(10**8)}

%timeit L[9999999]
%timeit D[9999999]

Results:

35.6 ns ± 3.03 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)
52.1 ns ± 2.76 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10000000 loops each)