On Jul 22, 2:36 am, Hendrik van Rooyen <hend...@microcorp.co.za> wrote: > On Tuesday 21 July 2009 15:49:59 Inky 788 wrote: > > > On Jul 20, 12:27 pm, Phillip B Oldham <phillip.old...@gmail.com> > > > wrote: > > > [snip] We > > > understand that lists are mutable and tuples are not, but we're a > > > little lost as to why the two were kept separate from the start. They > > > both perform a very similar job as far as we can tell. > > > My guess is that it was probably for optimization reasons long ago. > > I've never heard a *good* reason why Python needs both. > > The good reason is the immutability, which lets you use > a tuple as a dict key.
Thanks for the reply Hendrik (and Steven (other reply)). Perhaps I'm just not sophisticated enough, but I've never wanted to use a list/ tuple as a dict key. This sounds like obscure usage, and a bit contrived as a reason for having *both* lists and tuples. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
