[Tutor] is this use or abuse of __getitem__ ?

[eryksun]

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 8:16 AM, Albert-Jan Roskam <fomcl at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Am I abusing the __getitem__ method, or is this just a creative way of using it?

No, you're using it the normal way. The item to get can be an index, a
key, or even a slice.

http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#object.__getitem__

>         if not isinstance(key, (int, float)):
>             raise TypeError

Instead you could raise a TypeError if "not hasattr(key, '__int__')"
since later you call int(key).

>         if abs(key) > self.nCases:
>             raise IndexError

You might also want to support slicing. Here's an example:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/2936876/205580