[Python-Dev] PEP 372 -- Adding an ordered directory to collections ready for pronouncement

[Giovanni Bajo]

On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:36:32 -0800, Raymond Hettinger wrote:

> [Nick Coghlan]
>> The examples in the PEP used 'odict' (until recently), but the patch
>> was for OrderedDict.
> 
> As an experiment, try walking down the hall asking a few programmers who
> aren't in this conversion what they think collections.odict() is?
> Is it a class or function?  What does it do?  Can the English as second
> language folks guess what the o stands for?  Is it a builtin or pure
> python?  My guess is that the experiment will be informative.

Just today, I was talking with a colleague (which is learning Python 
right now) about "ordered dict". His first thought was a dictionary that, 
when iterated, would return keys in sorted order.

I beleive he was partly misguided by his knowledge of C++. C++ has always 
had std::map which returns sorted data upon iteration (it's a binary 
tree); they're now adding std::unordered_map (and std::unordered_set), to 
be implemented with a hash table. So, if you come from C++, it's easy to 
mistake the meaning of an ordered dict.

This said, I don't have a specific suggestion, but I would stay with 
lowercase-only for simmetry with defaultdict.
-- 
Giovanni Bajo
Develer S.r.l.
http://www.develer.com