as it turns outthings are not very different in python land those large image files remain in one single place in memory what you do is create variables that hold the locations of those images in memory these variables are small and can easily be passed around between different functions that is the big benefit of pointersthey allow you to point to potentially large segment of memory with just simple memory address support for pointers exists in your computer' hardwarewhere it is known as indirect addressing in pythonyou don' manipulate pointers directlyunlike in some other languagessuch as or pascal this has led some people to think that pointers aren' used in python nothing could be further from the truth consider this assignment in the python interactive shells set(we would normally say that is variable of the type set that iss is set this is not strictly truehowever the variable is rather reference ( "safepointerto set the set constructor creates set somewhere in memory and returns the memory location where that set starts this is what gets stored in python hides this complexity from us we can safely assume that is set and that everything works fine arrays an array is sequential list of data being sequential means that each element is stored right after the previous one in memory if your array is really big and you are low on memoryit could be impossible to find large enough storage to fit your entire array this will lead to problems of coursethe flip side of the coin is that arrays are very fast since each element follows from the previous one in memorythere is no need to jump around between different memory locations this can be very important point to take into consideration when choosing between list and an array in your own real-world applications in the latter parts of python data types and structureswe looked at the array data type and discovered the various operations that could be performed on it