!RE: Namedtuple problem #32.11.d

[Deborah Swanson]

Neil Cerutti wrote, on Wednesday, June 07, 2017 10:36 AM
> 
> On 2017-06-06, Deborah Swanson <python at deborahswanson.net> wrote:
> >> I too have sometimes started with a namedtuple and then found I 
> >> needed to make changes to the records. I typically abandon 
> namedtuple 
> >> at this point, after only one bad experience trying to 
> work around my 
> >> choice of container.
> >
> > I can appreciate that reaction.
> >
> > Guess I'm a bit of a bulldog though (right ot wrong), and the
concept 
> > of namedtuples is so ideally suited for the Excel spreadsheet 
> > conversions I'm working on, I'll keep on pushing the boundaries to
see 
> > how they can be made to work.  ;)
> 
> The namedtuple has found a happy place in my repertoire as 
> the return value of functions that transform external 
> read-only tabular data into a convenient form for lookup.
> 
> I agree pushing a language feature beyond its preferable use 
> cases is a good way to learn concepts and illuminate dark 
> corners of both my own skill and Python's features.

I certainly have learned a lot by doing exactly that. Sometimes it isn't
so much people giving the solution to a problem, though that's
definitely to the good, but the alternate solutions that are proposed
can also be highly instructive.

> An Excel spreadsheet that represents a table of data is 
> fairly simple to map onto a Python dict. One nearly codeless 
> way is to export it from Excel as a csv file and then read it 
> with csv.DictReader.
> 
> -- 
> Neil Cerutti

csv.DictReader! I didn't know there was one! I've been thinking about
how a spreadsheet could be put into a dict, but wasn't quite coming up
with a good way. But a csv.DictReader would be perfect, and I imagine
the keys would be the column names, which is also perfect.

Thanks for the lead on csv.DictReader. I suppose if I'd known one
existed it would be easy to find, but when you don't know, and you don't
think of it...

Deborah