Op 2004-12-15, Roel Schroeven schreef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Antoon Pardon wrote: >> Op 2004-12-15, Fredrik Lundh schreef <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: >>>sorry, but I don't understand your reply at all. are you saying that >>>dictionaries >>>could support mutable keys (e.g lists) by making a copy of the key? how >>>would >>>such a dictionary pick up changes to the original key object? (I'm talking >>>about >>>the key stored in the dictionary, not the key you're using to look things >>>up). >> >> >> You want to mutate a key that is within a dictionary? > > No, we don't want to mutate it; as far as I know, that is exactly the > reason why dictionaries don't support mutable keys.
And I think that is a stupid reason. There are enough other situations were people work with mutable objects but don't wish to mutate specific objects. Like objects in a sorted sequence you want to keep that way or objects in a heapqueue etc. Demanding that users of dictioanaries somehow turn their mutable objects into tuples when used as a key and back again when you retrieve the keys and need the object can IMO ibe a bigger support nightmare than the possibility that code mutates a key in a dictionary. -- Antoon Pardon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
