creating dictionnaries

[Michael Hudson]

"Michael P. Reilly" <arcege at shore.net> writes:

> Christian Caremoli <Christian.Caremoli at der.edf.fr> wrote:
> : Hi,
> : Dictionnaries can be created like that :
> : d={'a':1,'b':2}
> 
> : By calling a function you create a dictionnary like that :
> : def f(**d):
> :    return d
> 
> : d=f(a=1,b=2)
> 
> : I would like to be able to create dictionnaries with some similar syntax
> : like keyed tuples :
> : d=(a=1,b=2)
> 
> : Is there a way to do that ?
> 
> In a word, No.  The structure of the language would perform a namespace
> lookup on "a" and "b" instead of taking them as strings.  Also a tuple
> is still an expression, and Python does not allow assignments inside
> expressions.  This means that you would get a SyntaxError exception
> during bytecode compilation.  And even if you didn't, it would be
> likely that you would get a NameError exception.
> 
>   -Arcege
> 
> Note: I haven't looked at bytecodehacks, but that might let you do what
> you wish.  Since it would be extremely non-portable, I wouldn't suggest
> it for published or long-term code.

What? byecodehacks can't affect syntax! I'm quite proud of that bit of
code, but lets not blow it up into things it just isn't...

yours,
Michael