[Python-Dev] Py2.6 ideas (original) (raw)

Delaney, Timothy (Tim) tdelaney at avaya.com
Fri Feb 16 00:12:09 CET 2007

Guido van Rossum wrote:

On 2/15/07, Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettinger at verizon.net> wrote:

* Add a pure python namedtuple class to the collections module. I've been using the class for about a year and found that it greatly improves the usability of tuples as records. http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/500261 Hm, but why would they still have to be tuples? Why not just have a generic 'record' class?

Hmm - possibilities. "record" definitely has greater connotations of heterogeneous elements than "tuple", which would put paid to the constant arguments that "a tuple is really just an immutable list".

list - primarily intended for homogeneous elements record - primarily intended for heterogeneous elements, elements are (optionally?) named

and have mutable and immutable versions of each. Maybe the current list syntax would then continue to create a mutable list, and the current tuple syntax would create an immutable record (with no element names) i.e. the current tuple.

Tim Delaney

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