Data Structures

Why list, dict, set, and tuple behave so differently under the hood - the array-versus-hash-table split and the collections.abc protocols that unify every container in this section.

Lists, tuples, dicts, sets - semantics, mutability, and Big-O at a glance.

Slicing, sorting, `bisect`, named tuples, and list-vs-tuple decisions.

Insertion order, views, merging, `dict` comprehensions, and dict-based dispatch.

Membership, set algebra, and de-duplication patterns.

`defaultdict`, `Counter`, `deque`, `OrderedDict`, `ChainMap` in practice.

A decision checklist mapping access patterns to containers.

What makes an object hashable and why it matters for keys/sets.

Idioms for efficient, readable container use.