How to pretty-print cyclic dictionaries?

[Robert Kern]

On 4/29/10 11:23 AM, Dietrich Bollmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I would like to represent graphs as cyclic dictionaries in Python.
>
> The python code for the graphs is generated by some other program
> (written in lisp) and I wonder what would be the best syntax for writing
> the cycles in Python?

You can implement your ideas using Armin Ronacher's pretty.py:

   http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pretty

The default pretty printer for dicts looks like this:

     def dict_pprinter(obj, p, cycle):
         if cycle:
             return p.text('{...}')
         p.begin_group(1, '{')
         keys = obj.keys()
         try:
             keys.sort()
         except Exception, e:
             # Sometimes the keys don't sort.
             pass
         for idx, key in enumerate(keys):
             if idx:
                 p.text(',')
                 p.breakable()
             p.pretty(key)
             p.text(': ')
             p.pretty(obj[key])
         p.end_group(1, '}')

You could conceivably subclass RepresentationPrinter (the variable p above is an 
instance of this) that will assign increasing ID numbers to repeated objects so 
you can tag them.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco