[Python-Dev] Unordered tuples/lists

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 20 May 2010 08:40:25 pm Oleg Broytman wrote:
> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 09:56:03AM +0100, Gustavo Narea wrote:
> > I think it'd be useful enough to go in the standard library. Now
> > that there's a sample implementation, should I still try to
> > demonstrate why I believe it's worth adding to the stdlib and get
> > support?
>
>    I think yes. How many developers would find it useful?..

Adding classes to the standard library doesn't come without cost. 
There's the maintenance and testing burden, and the cognitive burden of 
having to choose between similar classes with slight variations of 
behaviour. I don't think the benefit of this proposed subclass is great 
enough to outweigh the costs.

It is a trivial subclass -- Oleg gave a seven line subclass of list -- 
with a fairly specialist use-case (it is a regular ordered list except 
for the purposes of equality comparisons). I don't believe it is a 
burden on developers to add it to their own application should they 
need it.

-1 for this.

If anyone wishes to support this proposal, please come up with a less 
misleading name than "UnorderedList".



-- 
Steven D'Aprano