[Tutor] Dictionaries

[Daniel Yoo]

> Message: 3
> From: rhicks@rma.edu
> To: tutor@python.org
> Date: Wed, 9 Feb 100 13:10:17 +0000
> Subject: [Tutor] Dictionaries...
> 
> On page 50 of "Learning Python" is makes the statement that dictionaries in 
> Python are randomized in their order in order to provide quick lookup. I have 
> talked to a programmer buddy and he doesn't know why this is. Why does an 
> unordered list provide a quick lookup?

When they say unordered, they don't mean that the list has no pattern.
What they refer to is the function that, given a key, figures out where a
value is in the list.  What we need is a nice function that evenly
distributes the keys through the list, and it's this that makes the list
look "unordered".

Getting a list of keys off this table will give us an "unordered" list.  
The randomized part refers to the way the categories are chosen.  It's not
quite alphabetic; it does some extra stuff to make sure that the buckets
have the same distribution of elements.  So that's why the list's
unordered.