Maybe just extend the functionality of the __getitem__ and __setitem__ methods of dicts?
class xdict(dict): def __getitem__(self,key): if type(key) in (tuple, list): return (dict.__getitem__(self,k) for k in key) else: return dict.__getitem__(self,key)
def __setitem__(self,key,value): if type(key) in (tuple, list): for k, v in zip(key,value): dict.__setitem__(self,k,v) else: dict.__setitem__(self,key,value)
d=xdict({'foo':23,'bar':42,'egg':'spam'}) d {'bar': 42, 'foo': 23, 'egg': 'spam'} d["foo",] <generator object at 0x9dbc02c> list(d["foo",]) [23] list(d["foo","bar"]) [23, 42] a,b=d['foo','egg'] a,b (23, 'spam') d['baken','bar'] = 'tomato', 36 d {'bar': 36, 'foo': 23, 'egg': 'spam', 'baken': 'tomato'}
Well, this would break current behaviour, so actually no. Not good. But maybe that way (no conflict because lists are unhashable):
class xdict(dict): def __getitem__(self,key): if isinstance(key,list): return (dict.__getitem__(self,k) for k in key) else: return dict.__getitem__(self,key)
def __setitem__(self,key,value): if isinstance(key,list): for k, v in zip(key,value): dict.__setitem__(self,k,v) else: dict.__setitem__(self,key,value)
d=xdict({'foo':23,'bar':42,'egg':'spam'}) list(d[["foo"]]) [23] list(d[["foo","bar"]]) [23, 42] a,b=d[['foo','egg']] a,b (23, 'spam') d[['baken','bar']] = 'tomato', 36 d {'bar': 36, 'foo': 23, 'egg': 'spam', 'baken': 'tomato'}
The [[ ]] looks almost like a spacial syntax. Good or bad? -panzi