Roy Smith: > I am befuddled as to why > people thought creating a dict by keyword would be a useful thing to > do, but left out (and, indeed, eliminated the chance to add the syntax > later) the obviously useful ability to hint at the size.
Adding the keyword syntax doesn't require much memory to a Python programmer because it's the same syntax used elsewhere. While adding another different method to dicts increases their API. Python is usually designed to have smaller APIs, to help programmers remember most things. I agree that a reserve method to Python dicts/sets can be a little useful, but Python programmers are usually more concerned about doing things in a short programmer time and short code space, than telling the computer how to do such things in the faster way (C++ is more for speed so the reserve of the STL hashes can be more useful). Bye, bearophile -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
