[Python-3000] Two proposals for a new list-like type: one modest, one radical (original) (raw)

Josiah Carlson jcarlson at uci.edu
Mon Apr 23 19:45:26 CEST 2007

"Daniel Stutzbach" <daniel at stutzbachenterprises.com> wrote:

I have two proposals for Python 3000 that I'll write PEP(s) for if there's interest. The first proposal is, I think, a modest one. The second proposal is related, but more radical. I fully expect the second proposal to be rejected for that alone, especially since I am a relatively an outsider to the Python developer community (though it was great to meet some of you at PyCon this year). I bring up the more radical proposal primarily for completeness. [snip] I recognize that the Python developer community is understandably very attached to the current array-based list, so I expect this to get shot down. I hope this doesn't reflect badly on the more modest proposal of including a new type in the collections module. Also, please don't kill the messenger. :-)

I would be +1 on including the object in the collections module in 2.6 and 3.0 . I've implemented variants of this particular structure using binary treaps a few different times.

In terms of 3rd party extensions that rely on the interface of a list, one could probably use the extended buffer protocol being discussed, but it really isn't nearly as simple as just traversing the array of PyObject* that a list exposes. -1 on replacing lists (generally) with your tree implementation. Base types should be as simple as possible.

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