Thorsten Kampe wrote:
I found out that I am rarely using tuples and almost always lists
because of the more flexible usability of lists (methods, etc.)
To my knowledge, the only fundamental difference between tuples and
lists is that tuples are immutable, so if this is correct, than list
are a superset of tuples, meaning lists can do everything tuples can
do and more.
Only tuples can be used as dictionary keys.
Is there any advantage for using tuples? Are they "faster"? Consume
less memory?
Not appreciably so in most cases. Certainly not enough to
be a factor in choosing which to use except perhaps in
very rare edge cases.
When is it better to use tuples instead of lists and when
better to use lists instead of tuples?
The canonical answer (which some disagree with) is that you
should use tuples when you have a collection of different
types of items, such as a 'struct' in C would have. Use
lists any other time you want a simple sequential collection
of items.
Use a list for effectively everything else, unless you need
an immutable (tuple) for a dictionary key.
One description of how to look at this that I've found helpful
is something along the lines of "if you can take a slice of
the data and consider it in the same way as the original,
then you should use a list". For example, if you have a set
of fifteen objects over which you plan to iterate, you can
just as well iterate over the first five. If, however, you
have a tuple of (year, month, day, hour, minute, second),
taking the first four items is quite a different thing than
taking all six of them.
-Peter
