[restored my attribution line so we know who said what] Christoph Zwerschke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ben Finney wrote: > > In what cases do you find yourself needing a dict that preserves > > its key order? Can you present a use case that would be improved > > by an ordered dict? > > There are too many different situations and it would be too much to > explain them here, usually in the case mentioned above where the > keys are not sorted alphabetically.
Without an example, it's hard to know what you want to do and whether an ordered dictionary is the best way to do it. > > For my part, I consider it a virtue of Python that the standard > > library doesn't change rapidly. It allows many competing > > implementations to be shaken out before everyone starts depending > > on any one of them. > > Ok, but this can be used as an argument to not add anything to the > standard lib any more. I hope not. Rather, it's an argument not to add something to the standard library until it's proven (to the BDFL's criteria) that it's better in than out. > There are already enough competing > implementations. Have they been sufficiently shaken out to show a clearly superior version? Is any version sufficiently beneficial to write a PEP for its inclusion in the standard library? > I simply wanted to ask why it is not available in the standard lib, > since I simply don't know > > - has it not been demanded loud enough? Loud demands don't count for much. PEPs with popular working implementations do. > - is it really not needed (if you need it it shows you are doing > something wrong)? You dismissed a request for your use cases with handwaving. How can we know? > - because nobody presented a satisfying implementation yet? I'm not sure what you mean by "satisfying". > - are there hidden difficulties or controversial issues? Another possibility: ordered dictionaries are not needed when Python 2.4 has the 'sorted' builtin. -- \ "Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are | `\ fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." -- "Lord" George | _o__) Gordon Noel Byron | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
