As a Perl monkey in the process of learning Python, I just stepped on
the "'1' (string) is not the same as 1 (integer) in regards to keys for
dictionaries/hashes" landmine. Is there a good way to ensure that
numbers represented as strings or ints do not get mixed up as keys?
Example of the problem:
>>> h2 = { 1 : ''}
>>> print h2.has_key(1)
True
>>> print h2.has_key('1')
False
The problem occurred because a method used to generate keys was
returning a string instead of a number without an explicit conversion
taking place. And since I was using hash.get(i, default_value) to avoid
having to pair every key lookup with a hash.has_key(), no exception was
thrown when the key wasn't found.
It's fugly to wrap every key reference in str(), ex:
foo[str(some_func(i))]. It's tedious to add a has_key before every key
lookup. And I have no real desire to stuff every hash inside a class in
order to ensure that keys are converted to strings.
Any good solutions or accepted practices to prevent the intermixing of
number strings and integers as hash keys? A hash wrapper class seems to
be the best bet so far.
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