sorteddict PEP proposal [started off as orderedict]

[Jeremy Sanders]

Mark Summerfield wrote:

> If there is positive feedback I will submit the PEP to the reviewers,
> so if you think it is a good idea please say so. (I'm sure that if you
> _don't_ like it you'll tell me anyway:-)

It would be nice to have the ability to use numerical indexes and the key,
but I don't think they should share the same methods.

A useful use case would be to make a LRU (least recently used) dictionary,
where the keys are time-based (e.g. an incrementing counter). You should be
able to identify the least recently used object for discarding by just
accessing the last item in the dictionary.

By the way, I think a LRU cache dictionary would be a great addition to the
standard library.

Is there any speed advantage from implementing the sorteddict as a red-black
tree or something similar in C?

Jeremy

-- 
Jeremy Sanders
http://www.jeremysanders.net/