[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 279 revisited (original) (raw)

holger krekel pyth@devel.trillke.net
Wed, 24 Apr 2002 16:03:41 +0200

On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 08:47:25AM -0400, Guido van Rossum wrote:

> If you consider lists to be a special dictionary > with implicit keys we can define 'items' to > generate (key,value) pairs for a collection so that > > for key,value in items(collection): > collection[key]==value > > holds no matter if collection is a list or a dictionary,

This has been proposed and rejected before. We've made the decision that "iter(dict)" iterates over the keys while "iter(list)" iterates over the values, and anything that tries to unify the two types (really categories of types: sequences and mappings) is bound to fail.

ok, i am fine with that.

after all i can always define my own 'items' or maybe better 'keyvalues' method to achieve the unification where needed :-)

regarding PEP279 i go with 'itemize' ...

holger