[Python-Dev] [UPDATE] PEP 274, Dict Comprehensions (original) (raw)

Tim Peters tim.one@home.com
Mon, 29 Oct 2001 14:14:39 -0500

[Barry]

Rationale

There are times when you have some data arranged as a sequences of length-2 sequences, and you want to turn that into a dictionary. In Python 2.2, the dictionary() constructor will take an optional keyword argument that indicates specifically to interpret a sequences of length-2 sequences as key/value pairs, and turn them into a dictionary.

This is implemented now, but in a different way. Suggested rewording:

In Python 2.2, the dictionary() constructor accepts an argument
that is a sequence of length-2 sequences, used as (key, value)
pairs to initialize a new dictionary object.

BTW, and not meaning to hijack your PEP , should dict.update() accept such an argument too? I didn't add it because

d.update(dictionary(such_an_argument))

seemed "almost good enough".

BTW2, are we going to rename "dictionary" to "dict" before 2.2b2? Before 2.2, "dict" was universally used on c.l.py to mean dictionary, and I'm at least +0 on adopting that for official 2.2 use.