Memory management in Python

Question

I'm new to python.To find the sizeof an integer i used getsizeof method available in sys module. It returns 24 bytes for integer and 34 bytes for char.

>>> sys.getsizeof(1)
24
>>> sys.getsizeof('a')
34

I feel this size (24 bytes or 34 bytes) is very large to hold an integer or char... I feel that memory is getting wasted much.. Could you please help me in understanding the concept behind this memory management in python.

Answer 1

Because everything is an object, everything has an object bookkeeping overhead. In CPython, it's at least size of a type pointer and reference count for every object. Plus whatever specific objects need for their data. And there's also garbage collector overhead for some objects. Certainly nothing is 'wasted', it's a silly idea.

And there is no char in Python, 'a' is a string of length 1.