dictionary initialization

[Weiguang Shi]

Just received an email from Batista, Facundo. Below are some quote and
my reply. 

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 09:09:46AM -0300, Batista, Facundo wrote:
> ... 
>   >>> a = {}
>   >>> a['1'] = 5
>   >>> a['1'] *= 2
>   >>> a['1']
>   10
>   
>   >>> a['1'] = "blah"
>   >>> a['1'] *= 2
>   >>> a['1']
>   'blahblah'
>   
>   >>> a['1'] = ['a', 8]
>   >>> a['1'] *= 2
>   >>> a['1']
>   ['a', 8, 'a', 8]
>   
> The type of the right hand operator does not have nothing to do with
> the
> type of the left operand!
> 

You mean in Python, of course. I can see this is going the religious
direction now.

All in all, I've realized when a language generalizes and abstracts, 
it loses convenience. Because of this, however powerful other
languages become, awk always has its place as long as the application
is there.

Weiguang