python STL?

[Dave Brueck]

xam wrote:
> "Dave Brueck" <dave at pythonapocrypha.com> wrote in message
> news:mailman.747.1068842483.702.python-list at python.org...
> > > being recently introduced to the joys of programming in a powerful
> > > dynamic language (go snake!) I periodically rethink which parts of C++ I
> > > still miss. One thing I really enjoy is the generics of C++ - i think
> > > they are the single strong benefit of a strongly typed system. I was
> > > wondering about the possibility of implementing STL-like algorithms in
> > > Python and the one thing that I cannot think of doing without a kludge
> > > is the object comparsion that so much of STL relies on, which in turn
> > > relies on types and function(<) overloading. Is there a way to implement
> > > something similar in python (short of multimethods?). How does the
> > > python dictionary object allow arbitrary key types? Is in internally
> > > using the references' addresses to impose the tree ordering?
> > > thanks,
> > > max.
> >
> > Hi Max,
> >
> > Could you give a more specific example of what you miss?
>
> std::sort - works on any well-ordered object collection (you just define
> your own operator< if you need to sort based on some weird criteria)

Right - this is what I suspected: most of the C++ STL _functionality_ is
available in Python already. Not all of it, but at least what I find to be the
most useful stuff (and in general if it's not built-in it's "almost" built-in
in that it's trivial to implement, so much so that having a Python STL wouldn't
make sense).

For example, Python's standard sort() already works on object collections, and
you could define your own comparison method if you want.

-Dave