On Thu, Nov 01, 2001 at 05:40:31PM -0600, Ian Bicking wrote: > Chuck Esterbrook <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >(Still hoping Python gets sets someday, pardon the pun. You can mimic > > >them with dictionaries, but that's like driving a car across the street > > >to get the mail.) > > > > I agree. It would also fit better with what MiddleKit is currently calling > > a "list" but for which it doesn't really guarantee an order. > > > > I think list, set and map are the 3 Big Containers that every language > > should have. > > I think dictionaries make for pretty decent sets. Just like lists > make for decent stacks and queues (well, once we got the thread-safe > .pop()).
Lists work very well for stacks or queues, and the other features of lists (random access) don't get in the way. But with dictionaries-as-sets, every time you add a key you have to make up a bogus value. None is the most obvious choice, but that evaluates to false so it's a little misleading. On the other hand, 1 is suitably true, but it's even more misleading. Less of a problem is having to do mySet.has_key(Thing) instead of "Thing in mySet", although I guess maybe you can do that in Python 2.2. -- -Mike (Iron) Orr, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (if mail problems: [EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://iron.cx/ English * Esperanto * Russkiy * Deutsch * Espan~ol _______________________________________________ Webware-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/webware-discuss
