Using dictionary to hold regex patterns?

[Thomas Mlynarczyk]

John Machin schrieb:

> Rephrasing for clarity: Don't use a data structure that is more
> complicated than that indicated by your requirements.

Could you please define "complicated" in this context? In terms of 
characters to type and reading, the dict is surely simpler. But I 
suppose that under the hood, it is "less work" for Python to deal with a 
list of tuples than a dict?

> Judging which of two structures is "simpler" should not be independent
> of those requirements. I don't see a role for intuition in this
> process.

Maybe I should have said "upon first sight" / "judging from the outer 
appearance" instead of "intuition".

> Please see my belated response in your "My first Python program -- a
> lexer" thread.

(See my answer there.) I think I should definitely read up a bit on the 
implementation details of those data structures in Python. (As it was 
suggested earlier in my lexer thread.)

Greetings,
Thomas

-- 
Ce n'est pas parce qu'ils sont nombreux à avoir tort qu'ils ont raison!
(Coluche)