tuples are useless???

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sun, 08 Apr 2007 22:20:45 -0700, James Stroud wrote:

> Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:26:37 +0000, James Stroud wrote:
>> 
>>> Bart Willems wrote:
>>>> James Stroud wrote:
>>>>> ... It boils down to the fact that tuples are useless as a result 
>>>>> unless you know you really need them--and you never really NEED them.
>>>> Could you clarify that for me? I use tuples *a lot* and I really *NEED* 
>>>> them - I'm building a lot of multi-tier reports where detail-level data 
>>>> is pulled out of a dictionary based on a composed key. It is impossible 
>>>> to build those dictionaries *without* using tuples.
>>>
>>> "Impossible" is a strong word, as is "need" (especially when in all caps).
>>>
>>> py> import md5
>>> py> class HashedList(list):
>>> ...   def __hash__(self):
>>> ...     h = md5.new()
>>> ...     for item in self:
>>> ...       h.update(str(hash(item)))
>>> ...     return int(h.hexdigest(), 16)
>>> ...
>>> py> hl = HashedList('bob', 'carol', 'ted')
>>> py> {hl:3}
>>> {['bob', 'carol', 'ted']: 3}
>>>
>>> Impossible? I wouldn't even say that this was all that difficult.
>> 
>> Possible, if by possible you mean "broken".
>> 
>> 
>>>>> D = {hl: 3}
>>>>> D
>> {['bob', 'carol', 'ted']: 3}
>>>>> hl[0] = 'Bob'
>>>>> D
>> {['Bob', 'carol', 'ted']: 3}
>>>>> D.keys()[0] is hl
>> True
>>>>> D[hl]
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>> KeyError: ['Bob', 'carol', 'ted']
>> 
>> 
> 
>    def __setitem__(self, *args):
>      raise TypeError, '%s doesn't support item assignment.' % 
> self.__class__.__name__
> 
> 
> Problem fixed. Next?

hl.reverse()
hl.sort() # if the list isn't already sorted
del hl[0]
hl.append()
etc.


Yes, you can block those as well... but by the time you've finished making
your HashedList immutable, it is just a slower tuple with a different
name.

In other words... you can avoid using tuples by using a tuple with a
different name. You might as well just do this:

HashedList = tuple



-- 
Steven.