In article <006078f0$0$9721$c3e8...@news.astraweb.com>, Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-cybersource.com.au> wrote: > >Hash tables (dicts) are useful for many of the same things that trees are >useful for, but they are different data structures with different >strengths and weaknesses, and different uses. To argue that we don't need >trees because we have dicts makes as much sense as arguing that we don't >need dicts because we have lists.
The problem is that trees are like standards: there are so many to choose from. Each has its own tradeoffs, and because Python dicts and lists can substitute for many of the traditionals uses of trees, the tradeoffs are less clear. I think nobody would object to adding trees to the standard library, but it will certainly require a clear PEP, preferably with a pointer to an existing PyPI library that has acquired real-world use. (In particular, WRT the bisect module, although insertion and deletion are O(N), the constant factor for doing a simple memory move at C speed swamps bytecode until N gets very large -- and we already have collections.deque() for some other common use cases.) -- Aahz (a...@pythoncraft.com) <*> http://www.pythoncraft.com/ "as long as we like the same operating system, things are cool." --piranha -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
