How to store the reference of a dictionary element ?

[Alfredo P. Ricafort]

On Wed, 2002-12-18 at 06:36, Bengt Richter wrote:

> I tried to understand "what you are *really* trying do do"(tm) but
couldn't ;-)
> If you would define your requirements independently of preconceived
implementation
> ideas, I suspect people would be able to help better.
> 

I'm not exactly sure if you are really replying to this thread. But just
in case you are, and if you curious on what I am trying to do, then here
it is:

I am writing a wxPython program and I am trying to create a class that
is somewhat similar to the menu_item_factory of GTK+.  The structure of
the INPUT data to the class is like this:

inputData=( (path,attribute1,attribute2,....),....)

for example:
   inputData=(
       ('/&File',               'text','text'....),
       ('/File/&New',           'text','text'....),
       ('/File/New/&Folder',    'text','text'..),
       ('/File/New/&Directory', 'text','text'..),
       ('/&Edit',               'text','text'..)
   )

When this input is pass on to the class, it will be broken down to a new
structure that the program can easily manipulate. The OUTPUT structure
will be somewhat like this:

  outputData={'menuKey':[attribute1,attribute2,{submenu}],..}

In our example above, the outcome will be like this:
  
  outputData={'File':['text','text',
                      {'New':['text','text',
                              {'Folder':['text','text',None],
                               'Directory:['text','text',None]
                             ]        
                     ],
              'Edit':['text','text',None]
              }           
 
But I realized that for this type of structure, where the submenus could
be n level deep, I will have difficulty searching for a particular
element in the dictionary.  Instead, I am thinking of changing the
structure to just 1 level like this:

In Python:
----------
(1) 

inputData={'parentKey':[attribute1,attribute2,ptrToChild1,ptrToChild2...],                            'child1Key':[attribute1,attribute2,ptrToGrandChild1....] 
           'child2Key':[attribute1,attribute2,None]
           'grandchild1Key':[attribute1,attribute2,None]  
          ..}

     OR

(2) inputData= {'parentKey':[attribute1,attribute2,None],
                  'child1Key':[attribute1,attribute2,ptrToParent]
                  'child2Key':[attribute1,attribute2,ptrToParent]
                  'grandchildKey':[attribute1,attribute2,ptrToChild1]
                 ..}

(2) In C
--------
   struct inputData {
          struct inputData *parent;
          char * path;
          char * attribute1;
          char * attribute2;
   }


What I was hoping for is to store the reference(not the value) of the
parent or the child. So if I where to use (2) as my structure and say:

   parent=inputData['child1Key'][2]  

then I would end up with the reference to the 'parentKey' element.  At
the same time I can use 

   inputData.has_key(key) 

to search for a particular key.


Hope this clear things up.


AL