Newbie question about class operator overloading

[Rory Campbell-Lange]

Hi. I'm just starting to use python.

I am anxious about how best to set and access items one level down in a
data structure if I am using __setitem__ and __getitem__.

At the moment I can do

for a data structure Data:

    object.Data = { 'one' : [1, 2, {}, 4],
                    'two' : [5, 6, {}, 8]}

I can use normal __setitem__ and __getitem__ to address Data keys very
easily

However, if I wish to access object.Data['one'][0] for instance, I am
using the following:

object['three'] = [0, 'val0'] # set
x =  object['three'][0]       # get

Is this advisable? I'm worried the syntax is very odd.

Extract from an example class:

	def __setitem__ (self,key,value): 
		if type(value) == list and type(value[0]) == int:
			if key not in self.data:
				self.data[key] = {} 
			self.data[key][value[0]] = value[1]
		else:
			self.data[key] = value

	def __getitem__ (self,key,value=None): 
		if not value==None:
			return self.data[key][value]
		else:
			return self.data[key]

-- 
Rory Campbell-Lange 
<rory at campbell-lange.net>
<www.campbell-lange.net>