Do you know about Python dictionaries? http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries
They're a kind of general map along the lines that you want, and you can build them in many ways. For example: import string m = dict((c, ord(c.lower())-ord('a')+17) for c in string.ascii_letters) print m['A'], m['a'] or indices = range(5, 26+5) m2 = dict(zip(string.ascii_lowercase, indices)) print m2['a'], m2['z'] or you can build one manually: m3 = {'a': 5, 'b': 238} print m3['a'], m3['b'] Doug -- To post to this group, send email to sage-support@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-support+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-support URL: http://www.sagemath.org