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In article <C4C036B6-130C-4718-BEB1-A7C9230082F4@gmail.com>,

�Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger@gmail.com> wrote:

\> On Sep 22, 2013, at 6:16 PM, Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> wrote:
\>
\> > Are we close to asking for pronouncement?
\>
\> When you're ready, let me know.
\>
\> In the meantime, I conducting usability tests on students in Python classes
\> and researching how well it substitutes for existing solutions for
\> case insensitive dictionaries (the primary use case) and for other
\> existing cases such as dictionaries with unicode normalized keys.
\>
\> If you want to participate in the research, I could also use help looking
\> at what other languages do. �Python is not the first language with
\> mappings or to encounter use cases for transforming keys prior
\> to insertion and lookup. � I would like to find out what work has
\> already been done on this problem.
\>
\> Another consideration is whether the problem is more general
\> that just dictionaries. �Would you want similar functionality in
\> all mapping-like objects (i.e. a persistent dictionaries, os.environ, etc)?
\> Would you want similar functionality for other services
\> (i.e. case-insensitive filenames or other homomorphisms).
\>
\> You can also add to the discussion by trying out your own usability
\> tests on people who haven't been exposed to this thread or the pep.
\>
\> My early results indicate that the API still needs work.
\>

>...

> \* Another issue is that we're accumulating too many dictionary
\> variants and that is making it difficult to differentiate and choose
\> between them. �I haven't found anyone (even in advanced classes
\> with very experienced pythonistas) would knew about
\> all the variations: �dict, defaultdict, Mapping, MutableMapping,
\> mapping views, OrderedDict, Counter, ChainMap, andTransformDict.

I agree.

I personally think being able to transform keys would be much more
useful as a property of existing dictionaries. I often use
case-insensitive keys. But I use them with dict and OrderedDict (and
probably ought to use defaultdict, as well).

TransformDict is neat, but I'd personally be happier seeing this as a
3rd party library for now.

\-- Russell

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