[Python-Dev] PEP 455: TransformDict

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Sat, 14 Sep 2013 10:49:52 +1000
Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
> 
> Is it more common to want both the canonical key and value at the same 
> time, or to just want the canonical key? My gut feeling is that I'm 
> likely to have code like this:
> 
> d = TransformDict(...)
> for key in data:
>     key = d.get_canonical(key)
>     value = d[key]
>     print("{}: {}".format(key, value))
> 
> in which case having a single call to return both will be great:
> 
> for key in data:
>     key, value = d.getitem(key)
>     print("{}: {}".format(key, value))
> 
> but I'm really not sure. Maybe Ethan is right.

I don't think it really matters. From getitem() it's trivial to extract
the key alone.

> I think these sorts of associated questions are why some people 
> (Raymond, Nick) want to see the proposal live outside of the standard 
> library for a while first. The general idea is great, but we're going to 
> bike shed the API without having much idea of how it will actually be 
> used.

Even after it's used, it will still be bikeshedded: such is how
proposals are generally discussed. There really isn't very much to
decide here, and whether we only return a key or a (key, value) pair is
almost cosmetic: both APIs are reasonably convenient.

> So, my suggestion is this:
> 
> - Let's add __transform__ to dicts for 3.4, similar to __missing__, and 
> see how people end up using it in the real world.

Well, __missing__ isn't used very much, I think. People use defaultdict.
(note that I'm not even proposing __transform__ right now :-))

> +1 on __transform__ method on dicts.
> 
> +0 on TransformedDict in 3.4
> 
> +1 on waiting for 3.5 based on experience on using __transform__.

Ok, thanks.

Regards

Antoine.