On Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:18:53 -0700, Carl Banks wrote:
> On Oct 2, 11:27 pm, Larry Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I didn't mean to imply that del a[1] would delete the first thing in
>> the set, but rather the item with a value of 1. Just as when we use it
>> on a dictionary:
>>
>> del a[1]
>>
>> doesn't mean delete the first dictionary entry but rather delete the
>> entry in the object with a value of 1, which IMHO would be perfectly
>> logical for a set (which is why I started this discussion).
>
>
> It's not logical at all. In all current uses of del, the thing that
> follows del is a valid expression. With sets, that's not the case.
I think Larry is suggesting that elements of sets should be removed in
the same way that keys of dictionaries are removed:
d = {57: "foo"}
s = set([57])
He's suggesting that del s[57] should work just like del d[57] works.
The fact that sets don't have a __getitem__ method doesn't mean that they
couldn't have a __delitem__ method:
class DelSet(set):
def __delitem__(self, element):
self.remove(element)
>>> s = DelSet([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> s
DelSet([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
>>> del s[4]
>>> del s[5]
>>> s
DelSet([1, 2, 3])
--
Steven
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