Dan Stromberg <drsali...@gmail.com> writes: > On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Ben Finney <ben+pyt...@benfinney.id.au> > wrote: > > Dan Stromberg <drsali...@gmail.com> writes: > > > >> Is there a way of getting the key used by the dictionary, short of > >> storing a reference to it in the value, or using a second dictionary? > > > > The dictionary knows its keys and can provide them on request. Call the > > ‘dict.keys’ method to get them as a collection. > > So it appears: > > $ ./pythons --command 'd={1:2, 2:4, 3:8}; print(d.keys())' […] > /usr/local/cpython-3.0/bin/python good <dict_keys object at 0x8514fa4> > /usr/local/cpython-3.1/bin/python good dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) > /usr/local/cpython-3.2/bin/python good dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) > /usr/local/cpython-3.3/bin/python good dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) > /usr/local/cpython-3.4/bin/python good dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) > /usr/local/cpython-3.5/bin/python good dict_keys([1, 2, 3]) > /usr/local/pypy3-2.4.0/bin/pypy3 good dict_keys([1, 2, 3])
Note that none of these (from Python 3) are lists; I don't promise a list, only a collection :-) > Would I have to do an O(n) search to find my key? If you're wanting to *locate* a particular item, you'll need to find it using whatever comparisons the values support. You described some custom type; the answer will depend on what that type supports for comparing values. What I can say at this point is: we are no longer talking about anything special to dictionary keys. You just have a collection of values, which you can iterate over and compare to some target. -- \ “The long-term solution to mountains of waste is not more | `\ landfill sites but fewer shopping centres.” —Clive Hamilton, | _o__) _Affluenza_, 2005 | Ben Finney -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list