classes vs dicts

[John Hunter]

>>>>> "Charlie" == Charlie  <charlvj at yahoo.com> writes:

    Charlie> Greetings, I am pretty new to Python and like it very
    Charlie> much, but there is one thing I can't figure out and I
    Charlie> couldn't really find anything in the docs that addresses
    Charlie> this.

    Charlie> Say I want to write an address book program, what is the
    Charlie> best way to define a person (and the like): create a
    Charlie> class (as I would do in Java) or use a dictionary?  I
    Charlie> guess using dictionaries is fastest and easiest, but is
    Charlie> this recommended?

For simple data with just a few fields, a tuple may be all you need

people = (
   ('John',   'D', 'Hunter', 36),
   ('Miriam', 'A', 'Sierig', 33),
   ('Rahel',  'S', 'Hunter', 6),
)

for first, middle, last, age in people:
    print '%s %s %s is %d years old' % (first, middle, last, age)

When you use named tuple unpacking, ie,

  first, middle, last, age = row

rather than indexing operations, ie row[0], I find using tuples can be
as readable as classes or dicts.  Again only for simple data
structures...

John Hunter