grab dict keys/values without iterating ?!

[Roy Smith]

In article <3efc283f-419d-41b6-ad20-c2901c3b9f78 at googlegroups.com>,
 rusi <rustompmody at gmail.com> wrote:

> The classic data structure for this is the trie:
> General idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie
> In python:
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11015320/how-to-create-a-trie-in-python/

I agree that a trie fits the problem description well.  If I were coding 
this up in C or C++, that's probably the data structure I'd use, with 
each node containing an array of pointers to nodes, and the array 
indexed by the ascii value of the next character (this doesn't translate 
well to unicode).  Lookup speed would be awesomely fast.

The problem is, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in Python.  The 
cited implementation uses dicts at each level.  By the time you've done 
that, you might as well just throw all the data into one big dict and 
use the full search string as the key.  It would be a lot less code, and 
probably run faster.

Still, as an exercise in learning about a useful (and under-appreciated) 
data structure, implementing this as a trie sounds like a wonderful idea.