>
> I'm using Python a little now, and its decision to call arrays lists
> drives me nuts. List operations are provided with unknown and unreliable
> performance characteristics. Part of the problem with Python's "list"
> type is that dynamic operations are provided, but the representation is
> a C array; as a result when dynamic operations are used copying with
> resizing occurs under the hood, at great cost. To my mind that makes
> Python a bad choice for any application where predictable performance
> matters at all (not just performance critical tasks).
>
>
If you want to use python for numeric applications you should use
Numeric python
(import Numeric). This package has genuine arrays.
Michel