2001 Enchancement Wishlist

[Gareth McCaughan]

Raymond Hettinger wrote:

> 4.  Allow dictionaries to respond to sequence operations as if .keys() were
>      in the list object.  Examples:
> 
>     knights = { 'lancalot':'good', 'gallahad':'brave', 'robin':'coward' }
>     for name in knights:
>            print name, knights[name]
>     print knights.len()
>     if 'arthur' in knights:
>            print 'Not the King'
>     print knights[0]              # may be any one depending on the hash table order
>     try:
>         print knights[5]
>     except IndexError:
>         print 'Too few knights for the ladies in the castle'
>     del knights['lancelot']      # regular mapping operations left unchanged.

Nope.

  | >>> knights = {}
  | >>> knights[0] = 'foo'
  | >>> knights[0]
  | 'foo'
  | >>> knights[1] = 'bar'
  | >>> knights.keys()
  | [1, 0]

Uh-oh.

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
sig under construc