lru cache

The @lru_cache decorator can be used wrap an expensive, computationally-intensive function with a Least Recently Used cache. This allows function calls to be memoized, so that future calls with the same parameters can return instantly instead of having to be recomputed.

@lru_cache(maxsize=None)  # Boundless cache
def fibonacci(n):
    if n < 2:
        return n
    return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2)

>>> fibonacci(15)

In the example above, the value of fibonacci(3) is only calculated once, whereas if fibonacci didn’t have an LRU cache, fibonacci(3) would have been computed upwards of 230 times. Hence, @lru_cache is especially great for recursive functions or dynamic programming, where an expensive function could be called multiple times with the same exact parameters.

@lru_cache has two arguments

• maxsize: Number of calls to save. When the number of unique calls exceeds maxsize, the LRU cache will remove the least recently used calls.
• typed (added in 3.3): Flag for determining if equivalent arguments of different types belong to different cache records (i.e. if 3.0 and 3 count as different arguments)

We can see cache stats too:

>>> fib.cache_info()
CacheInfo(hits=13, misses=16, maxsize=None, currsize=16)

NOTE: Since @lru_cache uses dictionaries to cache results, all parameters for the function must be hashable for the cache to work.

Official Python docs for @lru_cache. @lru_cache was added in 3.2.