Multikey Dict?

[Sam Pointon]

> If I could just say to Python: john and graham (and ...) are all a part
> of a "superdict" and either their id or their name can be used as keys.

> Can I do that somehow?

Sure you can. There are two obvious ways to do this - enlist the aid of
a Superdict (or similar) class to take care of the details. A simple
implementation would be:

class Superdict(object):

    def __init__(self, by_id, by_name):
        self.by_id = by_id
        self.by_name = by_name

    def __getitem__(self, value):
        if value.isdigit():
            return self.by_id[value]
        else:
            return self.by_name[value]


The alternative is to use some sort of database for storing these
values. It doesn't really matter which (hell, you could even reinvent a
relational wheel pretty simply in Python), as any DB worth its salt
will do exactly what you need.

Hope that helps,
 -Sam