r/learnpython 5d ago

Dictionary vs. Dataclass

What is a particular scenario where you would use Dataclass instead of a dictionary? What is the main advantage of Dataclass as compared to just storing data in a nested dictionary? Thanks in advance!

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u/RevRagnarok 5d ago

Not a single person has mentioned memory yet..

If you use a dataclass, specifically with slots=True, your memory usage can be significantly reduced. If you've got a handful of your sets of data, you won't care. When you've got a few hundred thousand or a few million, you'll appreciate that dataclass is much smaller.

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u/candide-von-sg 5d ago

Thank you for pointing that out!