[Tutor] Best Known Method for Filtering redundant list items.

[Chris Hengge]

Ok, well... I think people lost the scope of my question.. I'm happy using
the first method that was given to my post, I have stated in two emails that
the order doesn't matter..

What I asked was why the order was changed, or more directly, what is the
command actually doing to my data? I'm sure the order isn't totally random,
but based on how the items are checked and dropped.

The reason I care is because I'm just nosey like that and what to know what
it is doing differently then the method I mentioned in the start of this
thread.

Never did I question the validity of the answer the first reply gave me, it
works for what I need, not only that, it works well for what I need. I never
put any stipulation on the order of the final data, so I didn't expect an
answer that was order related.

On 12/1/06, Tor Hildrum <torhildrum at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/30/06, John Fouhy <john at fouhy.net> wrote:
>
> > For the same reason that dictionaries don't preserve order.
> > Basically, sets are (I think) implemented using a hash table.  You can
> > read about hash tables on wikipedia (or many other places), but one of
> > the components of a hash table is a function mapping keys to integers
> > in a particular range.
>
> Why not just call a sigar for a sigar.
>
> A set is a set, it may be implemented using a hash or it may be
> implemed using some other datastructure. It could be implemented using
> lists which preserves order, all though that doesn't make much sense.
> How it is implemented does not really matter here.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set
>
> If you want a collection of ordered objects, you don't want a set. Not
> even if the current implementation of sets in Python did preserve
> order. Doing so could not be considered as anything else than a ugly
> hack or exploitation of the current implementation. And would be
> likely to break in the future.
>
> Tor
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