[Python-Dev] Simple dicts

[Brett C.]

Tim Peters wrote:
> Behind the scenes, Damien Morton has been playing with radically different
> designs for "small" dicts.  This reminded me that, in previous lives, I
> always used chaining ("linked lists") for collision resolution in hash
> tables.  I don't have time to pursue this now, but it would make a nice
> experiment for someone who wants to try a non-trivial but still-simple and
> interesting project.  It may even pay off, but that shouldn't be a
> motivation <wink>.
> 

When I took data structures I was taught that chaining was actually the 
easiest way to do hash tables and they still had good performance 
compared to open addressing.  Because of this taught bias I always 
wondered why Python used open addressing; can someone tell me?

I am interested in seeing how this would pan out, but I am unfortunately 
going to be busy for the next three days (if anyone is going to be at E3 
Thursday or Friday for some odd reason let me know since I will be 
there).  If someone takes this up please let me know; I am interested in 
helping if I can.  Perhaps this should be a sandbox thing?

-Brett