classes vs dicts

[Holger Türk]

Isaac To wrote:
>>>>>>"Charlie" == Charlie  <charlvj at yahoo.com> writes:
>     Charlie> Greetings, I am pretty new to Python and like it very much, but
>     Charlie> there is one thing I can't figure out and I couldn't really
>     Charlie> find anything in the docs that addresses this.
> 
>     Charlie> Say I want to write an address book program, what is the best
>     Charlie> way to define a person (and the like): create a class (as I
>     Charlie> would do in Java) or use a dictionary?  I guess using
>     Charlie> dictionaries is fastest and easiest, but is this recommended?
> 
> 
> Python is about making the complexity where it worth.  If you cannot see
> that a class will help, the safe choice is to do it with a dict.  Later, if


I don't think so. If you don't want to define set... and get ...
methods, you can still misuse a class in this way:


class Person (object): pass

somePerson = Person ()
somePerson.name = "his name"
somePerson.address = "her address"


instead of


somePerson = {}
somePerson ["name"] = "his name"
somePerson ["address"] = "her address"


The first alternative is easier to read and even safer:
If you need to extend the capabilities of the class, you can
still redefine the behaviour of the data fields using
descriptors.

Greetings,

Holger