[Tutor] Which should it be, lists, tuples, dictionary or files?

[Steven D'Aprano]

Ken G. wrote:
> I have been using an Open Office Spreadsheet containing basically, the 
> food name, basic serving amount, calories, sodium and carbohydrate.  
> Daily, I entered the servicing amount being eaten and its calculate the 
> amount of calories, sodium and carbohydrate.  For some odd reason, I 
> kept losing the spreadsheet and its data.
> 
> I am interested in keeping track of the number of calories consumed each 
> day.  Due to losing the spreadsheet data so frequencies, I decided to 
> use Python in keeping track of the basic information and perhaps, keep 
> track of the calories in a file.

If you lose the spreadsheets, what makes you think you won't lose the Python 
files?

[...]
> Should the above five elements be stored as a list, tuples, dictionary 
> or file?  I am will familiar with files and have some knowledge of using 
> lists and tuples.  Not too familiar with dictionary.

If you to store the data permanently, it has to go into a file. I suggest you 
learn about INI files to start with. Start by googling for "INI file format" 
and see if it sounds like what you could use.



-- 
Steven