On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 2:19 AM, Larry Martell <larry.mart...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think I know the answer is no, but is there any package that allows > creating a list with holes in it? E.g. I'd want to do something like: > > x[10] = 12 > x[20] = 30 > > I'm thinking of something like defaultdict but for lists (I know > that's very different, but ... )
Depending on what exactly you need, it's probably worth just using a dict. In what ways do you need it to function as a list? You can always iterate over sorted(some_dict.keys()) if you need to run through them in order. Alternatively, if you expect to fill in most of the elements, it's possible you'd be happier working with a subclass of list that auto-expands by filling in the spare space with a singleton meaning "no element here". The code probably exists somewhere, but if not, it wouldn't be hard to write. Then it'd be a list, but you can start with it empty and assign as you describe above. What's the use case? I expect that one or the other of those options would cover most cases, but maybe yours is different. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
