[Python-Dev] Repeatability of looping over dicts

[Fred Drake]

On Jan 4, 2008, at 5:54 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> What code would break if we loosened this restriction? I guess
> defining d.items() as zip(d.keys(), d.values()) would no longer fly,
> but does anyone actually depend on this?

I don't know what code would break today; this was initially added to  
the set of promises made by the dict methods a decode ago, but it was  
in response to a need in the software I was working on at the time  
(possibly Grail, for which 2.6/3.0 isn't an issue).

That question should probably be addressed to a fairly wide audience  
(comp.lang.python) since the promise has been there for so long.


   -Fred

-- 
Fred Drake   <fdrake at acm.org>