On Oct 20, 2004, at 10:04 AM, Alex Levy wrote:
James Y Knight wrote:
But since I provide the list, I can guarantee that there aren't. And I need the ordering. And even if there are duplicates, it's not a horrible thing. It just means there'll be two entries in the menu that mean the same thing. Under some conditions you might even want that.
For the sake of argument, I can't think of _any_ circumstances where I'd want two different objects associated with the same key. Can you? How would you go about determining which object was actually chosen?
Well, I think it's a silly thing to argue about since the most important part is the ordering. The ability to have duplicates kinda just falls out of that. But, here goes, anyways. Two strings, presented to the user, with the same meaning. You wouldn't determine which was chosen, what with them having the same meaning and all. This example has two sets of duplicate keys, just for extra points. United States of America shows up in the alphabetized list, and in a separate section at the top. The blank entry shows up first, and between the initial countries and the rest. Choose your Country: USA [United States of America] Canada Afganistan Algeria United Kingdom United States of America Uruguay Zimbabwe James