On: Weird Python Integers

[masklinn]

You could probably find out from the code's log. I'd guess the small positive integers are common due to e.g. iteration or len() of small collections and the like, and the very small negatives are due to things like error values.

[jwilk → masklinn]

I did some git archaeology. Here are relevant commits and bug reports:

* Initial commit with -1...99 cached:

https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/842d2ccdcd540399501...

* Cache more negative numbers, -5...99:

https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/c91ed400e053dc9f11d...

https://bugs.python.org/issue561244

* Cache more positive numbers, -5...256:

https://github.com/python/cpython/commit/418a1ef0895e826c65d...

https://bugs.python.org/issue1436243

[woodrowbarlow → jwilk]

good find! here's a summary:

it looks like they searched the standard library for negative integer literals and that's how they settled on -5 for the low end.

the high end came after introducing the `bytes` object. it went up to 256 instead of just 255 for size/len checks.

[llccbb → masklinn]

The small negatives might also be for indexing from the end of lists. `my_list[-1]` is super common.

[masklinn → llccbb]

Good point.