[Python-Dev] dict(keys, values) (original) (raw)

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Thu Feb 1 11:53:59 CET 2007

Brian Quinlan wrote:

George Sakkis wrote:

Perhaps this has been brought up in the past but I couldn't find it in the archives: far too often I use the idiom dict(zip(keys,values)), or the same with izip. How does letting dict take two positional arguments sound ?

Pros: - Pretty obvious semantics, no mental overhead to learn and remember it. - More concise (especially if one imports itertools just to use izip). - At least as efficient as the current alternatives. - Backwards compatible. Cons: - Yet Another Way To Do It - Marginal benefit Also note that the keyword variant is longer than the zip variant e.g. dict(zip(keys, values)) dict(keys=keys, values=values) and the relationship between the keys and values seems far less obvious to me in the keyword variant. Unfortunately

dict(keys=keys, values=values) == {keys: values}

regards Steve

Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC/Ltd http://www.holdenweb.com Skype: holdenweb http://del.icio.us/steve.holden Blog of Note: http://holdenweb.blogspot.com See you at PyCon? http://us.pycon.org/TX2007

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