thebjorn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sep 29, 4:23 pm, Duncan Booth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [...] >> Another example would be if you had a library which serialised a >> dictionary to xml. There is nothing wrong with the library if it >> doesn't care about order, but if you have some other reason why you >> want the xml to be stable (e.g. because you store it in a version >> control system and want to compare revisions) then a sorteddict would >> allow you to impose that behaviour on the library from outside. >> >> Contrary to my earlier insistence that sorteddict is only really >> useful if you can have a key parameter, both of these examples simply >> want an arbitrary but defined order of iteration for dictionary keys. >> A much simpler sorteddict that has been discussed earlier would be >> sufficient. > > In fact, a dictionary that maintains insertion order would work in > this case too. > It would be better than the current situation, but say I have elements 'a', 'b', and 'c'. Next run of the program I delete 'b', then the run after that I add 'b' back into the list so now I might get 'a', 'c', 'b'. Sorting would ensure that I can tell that I actually reverted a change.
Right now I think there are probably three dict variants needed: sorteddict (still waiting for a convincing use case), ordereddict (lots of use cases), and this one: stabledict. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
