Question

I am new to python and am struggling to figure out how to initialize an array of unicode chars to a certain size. I want to use arrays not lists as I desire O(1) random access and O(1) amortized cost for insertion. So far I have this:

from arrays import *
a = array('u')

but obviously this is a zero length array.

Thanks,
Aly

Answer 1

This creates a new array initialized to "unicode string".

from array import *
a = array('u', u"unicode string")

If you only want it initialized to a certain size, you can do this:

a = array('u', u'\0' * size)

This will initialize a unicode character array with size size initialized to null characters.