pythondictionarymemory-management

Memory-usage of dictionary in Python?

I am slightly confused when I use the getsizeof method in the sys module for dictionaries. Below I have created a simple dictionary of two strings. The two strings' sizes are clearly larger than the one of the dictionary. The dictionary size is probably the dictionary overhead only, i.e., it doesn't take the actual data into account. What is the best way to figure out the memory-usage of the whole dictionary (keys, values, dictionary overhead)? 

>>> first = 'abc'*1000
>>> second = 'def'*1000
>>> my_dictionary = {'first': first, 'second': second}
>>> getsizeof(first)
3021
>>> getsizeof(second)
3021
>>> getsizeof(my_dictionary)
140
Solution

  • From the PythonDocs

    See recursive sizeof recipe for an example of using getsizeof() recursively to find the size of containers and all their contents.

    So it only counts the overhead, but you can use the function in this link to calculate it for containers like dicts.