frozendict (v0.1)

[kj]

In <878w29kxjp.fsf at gmail.com> Arnaud Delobelle <arnodel at gmail.com> writes:

>E.g., try with {1:'a', 1j:'b'}

I see.  Thanks for this clarification.  I learned a lot from it.

I guess that frozenset must have some way of canonicalizing the
order of its elements that is dependent on their Python values but
not on their comparability.  My first thought was that they are
ordered according to their hash values, but this theory doesn't
hold:

>>> abc = ('a', 'b', 'c')
>>> sorted(map(hash, abc))
[-468864544, -340864157, -212863774]
>>> map(hash, frozenset(abc))
[-468864544, -212863774, -340864157]

I.e. the ordering of the elements in the frozenset does not correspond
to the ordering of their hashes in either direction.  Hmmm. 

I tried to understand this by looking at the C source but I gave
up after 10 fruitless minutes.  (This has been invariably the
outcome of all my attempts at finding my way through the Python C
source.)

I guess the take-home message is that frozenset is a more general
way to canonicalize an iterable object than sorting, even though
the reasons for this still remain a mystery to me...  Then again,
just looking at the voodoo that goes into algorithms for computing
hashes fills me with despair.  As much as I dislike it, sooner or
later I'll have to go on faith.

~kj