Structures

[Paulo J. Matos]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Arnaud Delobelle
<arnodel at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au> writes:
>
>> "Paulo J. Matos" <pocmatos at gmail.com> writes:
> [...]
>> Okay, you're talking about 'struct' from the C language. That helps
>> answer the question.
>
> Note that structs are mutable.
>

Ah... :( That's a no go!

>> In Python, the way to do that is with a dict. A class can be used, but
>> is often overkill if one doesn't need customised behaviour.
>>
>>> The fact that python 2.6 has now named tuples is a breath of fresh
>>> air!
>
> But isn't mutable, so it doesn't seem to be what you (Paulo) need.
>

What's then the reason for adding named tuples if they are not mutable...???

>> That works also, but a dict will be more broadly useful; and
>> compatible with any Python version.
>
> And is mutable.
>

Even though I can use dicts where the keys are strings (as if it were
the name of the field), it seems to heavy, since a structure doesn't
need to be resizable (and dicts are) and it has constant time access
(which depending on the implementation I would guess dicts don't
have).

Can someone please clarify?

Cheers,

Paulo

> --
> Arnaud
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>
>
>



-- 
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocmatos at gmail.com
Webpage: http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm