[Python-3000] sets in P3K?

[Ian Bicking]

Toby Dickenson wrote:
> On Wednesday 26 April 2006 09:03, Talin wrote:
> 
> 
>>In my experience dict literals are far more useful than set literals.
>>In fact, I don't think I've ever made a set literal. The only
>>syntactical short cut that I would find useful for a set would
>>be "new empty set", for which I think "set()" is probably short
>>enough already. 
> 
> 
> I quite often write....
> 
>     if state in (case1,case2,case3):
> 
> as a shorter form of....
> 
>     if state==case1 or state==case2 or state==case3:

Yes, this is what I do; for small static sets inlined into source code 
lists or tuples are slightly more convenient, and so I'd never use a set 
in that situation without a set literal.

I don't know if this points one way or the other, but that sets are only 
built up out of sequences is a byproduct of the (lack of) syntax, which 
makes people use lists for sets; it's not that literal sets aren't 
useful.  OTOH, lists and tuples are a perfectly workable alternative to 
sets, so maybe it doesn't matter much.


-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  /  http://blog.ianbicking.org