Help needed : Dictionary tricks in 2.2

[pekka niiranen]

Two questions:

 1)    In Guido's tutorial he created a new dictionary as follows:

    class defaultdict(dict):

        def __init__(self, default=None):
            dict.__init__(self)
            self.default = default

        def __getitem__(self, key):
            try:
                return dict.__getitem__(self, key)
            except KeyError:
                return self.default

        def merge(self, other):
            for key in other:
                if key not in self:
                    self[key] = other[key]

Q1: Is it possible to add a method that would sort dictionary in place:

        def sortme(self):
            keys = self.keys()
            keys.sort()
            AND NOW WHAT ???

2) The following code turns list (or tuple) into dictionary fast (without doubles):

	>>> d = {}
	>>> l = ['a','b','c','b']
	>>> dummy = map(operator.setitem, [d]*len(l), l, [])
	>>> d
	{'a': None, 'c': None, 'b': None}

Q2: How can I modify the code to create dictionary with
    empty string -values instead of None's

	{'a': "", 'c': "", 'b': ""}
	

-pekka-