What Are Slots in Programming?

Slots are a feature of Python that allows objects to be stored in a container such as a list or dict. They are similar to attributes in that they can be used to store data, but they differ in how they are accessed.

Slots are accessed using the special __slots__ attribute, which is a tuple of strings. Each string is the name of a slot.

Slots are often used to store data that is specific to an object and would not be needed by other objects of the same type. For example, if you have a class for representing animals, you might want to store the animal’s name and weight as slots.

Slots can also be used to reduce the memory footprint of an object by avoiding the creation of dynamic attributes. By using slots, you can explicitly declare which attributes an object will have and save memory that would otherwise be used for storing dynamic attributes.

Slots are a feature of Python that allows objects to be stored in a container such as a list or dict. They reduce the memory footprint of an object by avoiding the creation of dynamic attributes and are accessed using the special __slots__ attribute, which is a tuple of strings.