What is dict?

Duncan Booth duncan at NOSPAMrcp.co.uk
Tue Aug 13 04:59:57 EDT 2002


martin at v.loewis.de (Martin v. Loewis) wrote in 
news:m3eld37jgq.fsf at mira.informatik.hu-berlin.de:

>> What is consensus within the Python community? Is calling dict a
>> function a case of a misnomer?
> 
> dict used to be a function, so that is still left over from Python 2.1
> and earlier. I believe there is already a bug report requesting the
> documentation to be corrected - apparently, nobody found it important
> enough so far to actually write a patch to the documentation.
> 

Close, but not quite correct.

Most of the types available as builtins: complex, float, int, list, long, 
str, tuple, type and unicode were functions in Python 2.1.x and earlier and 
have now become type objects whose constructors accept the same arguments 
as the functions accepted.

'open' was a function, the 'file' type was added and the open function 
became an alias for 'file'.

However, 'dict' did not actually exist at all in 2.1, so if the 
documentation says it is a function it is plain wrong, not just out of 
date. Perhaps the author felt it was wrong in the lies-to-children[1] 
sense, as it is often used as though it were a function.

The other new types to appear in __builtins__ are: classmethod, object, 
property, staticmethod and super.

[1] A term coined by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen in 'The Science of 
Discworld' by Terry Pratchett, et al.

-- 
Duncan Booth                                             duncan at rcp.co.uk
int month(char *p){return(124864/((p[0]+p[1]-p[2]&0x1f)+1)%12)["\5\x8\3"
"\6\7\xb\1\x9\xa\2\0\4"];} // Who said my code was obscure?



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