question about dictionary type..

[Carl Banks]

eugene kim wrote:
> hi..
> 
> i'd like to have a dictionary which looks like
> table = { category1 : { category2 : { category3 : 'garbage value' } } }
> 
> category1 has many category2
> category2 has many category3
> 
> i expected
> table[ 'computer' ][ 'language' ][ 'python' ] = 0
> to create {computer : { language : { python :0 }}}
> table[ 'computer' ][ 'language' ][ 'java' ] = 0
> to becomes { 'computer' : { 'language' : { 'python' :0 , 'java' :0 }}}
> 
> but python doesn't allow me to do this..
> can anyone help me?


Yes.  Python is not Perl.  It does not automatically create
dictionaries or lists; you have to create the dict or list and bind it
to something first.  In other words, you can't do this:

   a['b'] = c

so ou have to do this:

   a = {}
   a['b'] = c

========

However, I thought it might be useful initialize deeply-nested tables
without having to explicitly create each new dictionary, so I thought
I'd program something up that does that (requires Python 2.2, of
course):


    class autonestdict(dict):
        def __getitem__(self,attr):
            try:
                return super(autonestdict,self).__getitem__(attr)
            except KeyError:
                return _autonestclosure(self,attr)

    class _autonestclosure(object):
        def __init__(self,nest,attr):
            self.nest = nest
            self.attr = attr
        def __getitem__(self,attr):
            return _autonestclosure(self,attr)
        def __setitem__(self,attr,value):
            obj = autonestdict()
            obj[attr] = value
            self.nest[self.attr] = obj


Then, you can use it like this:

    table = autonestdict()
    table[ 'computer' ][ 'language' ][ 'python' ] = 0
    table[ 'computer' ][ 'language' ][ 'java' ] = 1


The big problem with this class is when you do something like this:

    result = table['computador']

You don't get a KeyError; instead result gets bound to a
_autonestclosure object.  Which makes detecting errors kind of hard.


-- 
CARL BANKS
http://www.aerojockey.com