Is it allowed to use caching in HW8?

Question

For the caching either I need to use a global variable or add new parameters in the pre-defined function. Is it allowed?

Answer 1

you can use caching internally, to speed up your pharaohs_cypher, but you CANNOT use it to remember partial results to be used in a following test run (which we execute to compute the average execution time).

Thus the caching test will fail if your defaults, global variables or class attributes (or any other global attribute) change before and after the execution of pharaohs_revenge.

Answer 2

Caching is prohibited between test runs, but is allowed during a test run.
Actually, global variables can be used but not for caching between test runs, they should not change between before and after a test run.

Comments

So we are allowed to use global variables as long as their values don't change?

For example, can I use any dictionary as a global variable?

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Global variables with mutable values could introduce side-effects, but if the elements of your 'global' dictionary don't change between before and after the execution of the pharaohs_revenge function, that's fine.
However, if your dictionary is empty at the beginning of the test run, you need to clear the data in it at the end.

Answer 3

From what is said here: https://q2a.di.uniroma1.it/30035/tests-caching-and-timing , it's prohibited