On Jan 9, 11:05 pm, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Jan 9, 8:15 am, Paddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > On Jan 9, 6:52 am, Paddy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > On Jan 9, 2:19 am, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > wrote: > > > > > Greetings Pythoneers -- > > > > > Some of us over on edu-sig, one of the community actives, > > > > have been brainstorming around this Rich Data Structures > > > > idea, by which we mean Python data structures already > > > > populated with non-trivial data about various topics such > > > > as: periodic table (proton, neutron counts); Monty Python > > > > skit titles; some set of cities (lat, long coordinates); types > > > > of sushi. > > > > > Obviously some of these require levels of nesting, say > > > > lists within dictionaries, more depth of required. > > > > > Our motivation in collecting these repositories is to give > > > > students of Python more immediate access to meaningful > > > > data, not just meaningful programs. Sometimes all it takes > > > > to win converts, to computers in general, is to demonstrate > > > > their capacity to handle gobs of data adroitly. Too often, > > > > a textbook will only provide trivial examples, which in the > > > > print medium is all that makes sense. > > > > > Some have offered XML repositories, which I can well > > > > understand, but in this case we're looking specifically for > > > > legal Python modules (py files), although they don't have > > > > to be Latin-1 (e.g. the sushi types file might not have a > > > > lot of romanji). > > > > > If you have any examples you'd like to email me about, > > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a good address. > > > > > Here's my little contribution to the > > > > mix:http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/python/gis.py > > > > > Kirby Urner > > > > 4D Solutions > > > > Silicon Forest > > > > Oregon > > > > I would think there was more data out there formatted as Lisp S- > > > expressions than Python data-structures. > > > Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on 'wrapping' XML and CSV data- > > > sources? > > > > - Paddy. > > > The more I think on it the more I am against this- data should be > > stored in programming language agnostic forms but which are easily > > made available to a large range of programming languages. > > If the format is easily parsed by AWK then it is usually easy to parse > > in a range of programming languages. > > > - Paddy. > > It's OK to be against it, but as many have pointed out, it's often > just one value adding step to go from plaintext or XML to something > specifically Python. > > Sometimes we spare the students (whomever they may be) this added > step and just hand them a dictionary of lists or whatever. We > may not be teaching parsing in this class, but chemistry, and > having the info in the Periodic Table in a Python data structure > maybe simply be the most relevant place to start. > > Many lesson plans I've seen or am working on will use these .py > data modules. > > Kirby
Then I'd favour the simple wrappings of bearophile and Frederik Lundhs replies where it is easy to extract the original datamaybe for updating , or for use in another language. - Paddy. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list