[Python-Dev] syntactic support for sets (original) (raw)

Brett Cannon brett at python.org
Wed Feb 1 20:59:10 CET 2006

On 2/1/06, Greg Wilson <gvwilson at cs.utoronto.ca> wrote:

Hi,

I have a student who may be interested in adding syntactic support for sets to Python, so that: x = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5} and: y = {z for z in x if (z % 2)} would be legal. There are of course issues (what's the syntax for a frozen set? for the empty set?), but before he even starts, I'd like to know if this would ever be considered for inclusion into the language.

I am -0 on set syntax support. If the set() constructor was expanded to take an arbitrary number of arguments (and thus be more inline with the dict constructor) then the syntax need really starts to go away since the above could be done as set(1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

As for the set copmrehension/expression/thing, I don't think that is needed at all when set(z for z in x if z % 2) will get the job done just as well without adding more syntactic sugar to the language for something that is so easy to do already.

p.s. please Cc: me as well as the list, since I'm no longer subscribed.

-Brett

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