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

Donovan Baarda abo at minkirri.apana.org.au
Fri Feb 3 18:04:24 CET 2006

On Fri, 2006-02-03 at 09:00 -0800, Josiah Carlson wrote: [...]

Sets are tacked on. That's why you need to use 'import sets' to get to them, in a similar fashion that you need to use 'import array' to get access to C-like arrays.

No you don't;

$ python Python 2.4.1 (#2, Mar 30 2005, 21:51:10) [GCC 3.3.5 (Debian 1:3.3.5-8ubuntu2)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

v=set((1,2,3)) f=frozenset(v)

set and frozenset are now builtin.

I personally object to making syntax for sets for the same reasons I object to making arrays, heapqs, Queues, deques, or any of the other data structure-defining modules in the standard library into syntax.

Nuff was a fairy... though I guess it depends on where you draw the line; should [1,2,3] be list(1,2,3)?

-- Donovan Baarda <abo at minkirri.apana.org.au> http://minkirri.apana.org.au/~abo/

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