Hi all. I am new to Python and have a problem regarding data structures.
In my application I will be having several messages and my own type of IDs (Lamport clocks) to go with these messages. I will need to frequently ask for specific messages based on the ID. Hence a dictionary seems a better choice than a list, as I will be using my own IDs to index into the data structure. However, the problem is that I will also at times ask for a specific message based on the ID key, but then want _all_ messages with a higher ID returned as well. :shock: From my research, there are two problems with a dictionary then: 1. it can't be sorted (only returns a sorted list), 2. even if it was possible to sort a dictionary, it is not possible to iterate over it from a given location.
So, it seems I want the best of both worlds: specific indexing using my own IDs/keys (not just by list element location), sorting and the ability to start iterating from a specific location. I am trying to prevent having to scan through a list from the beginning to find the desired ID, and then return all elements after that. Is there another data structure or design pattern which will do what I want? Thanks a lot for any help! :)
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