Commit 4d65af08 authored by Raymond Hettinger's avatar Raymond Hettinger

Add section headers and examples.

parent 6a91e94e
......@@ -10,9 +10,11 @@
This module implements high-performance container datatypes. Currently,
there are two datatypes, deque and defaultdict.
Future additions may include B-trees and Fibonacci heaps.
Future additions may include balanced trees and ordered dictionaries.
\versionchanged[Added defaultdict]{2.5}
\subsection{\class{deque} objects \label{deque-objects}}
\begin{funcdesc}{deque}{\optional{iterable}}
Returns a new deque objected initialized left-to-right (using
\method{append()}) with data from \var{iterable}. If \var{iterable}
......@@ -137,7 +139,7 @@ IndexError: pop from an empty deque
deque(['c', 'b', 'a'])
\end{verbatim}
\subsection{Recipes \label{deque-recipes}}
\subsubsection{Recipes \label{deque-recipes}}
This section shows various approaches to working with deques.
......@@ -215,6 +217,8 @@ def maketree(iterable):
\subsection{\class{defaultdict} objects \label{defaultdict-objects}}
\begin{funcdesc}{defaultdict}{\optional{default_factory\optional{, ...}}}
Returns a new dictionary-like object. \class{defaultdict} is a subclass
of the builtin \class{dict} class. It overrides one method and adds one
......@@ -255,3 +259,79 @@ the standard \class{dict} operations:
from the first argument to the constructor, if present, or to \code{None},
if absent.
\end{datadesc}
\subsubsection{\class{defaultdict} Examples \label{defaultdict-examples}}
Using \class{list} as the \member{default_factory}, it is easy to group
a sequence of key-value pairs into a dictionary of lists:
\begin{verbatim}
>>> s = [('yellow', 1), ('blue', 2), ('yellow', 3), ('blue', 4), ('red', 1)]
>>> d = defaultdict(list)
>>> for k, v in s:
d[k].append(v)
>>> d.items()
[('blue', [2, 4]), ('red', [1]), ('yellow', [1, 3])]
\end{verbatim}
When each key is encountered for the first time, it is not already in the
mapping; so an entry is automatically created using the
\member{default_factory} function which returns an empty \class{list}. The
\method{list.append()} operation then attaches the value the new list. When
keys are encountered again, the look-up proceeds normally (returning the list
for that key) and the \method{list.append()} operation adds another value to
the list. This technique is simpler and faster than an equivalent technique
using \method{dict.setdefault()}:
\begin{verbatim}
>>> d = {}
>>> for k, v in s:
d.setdefault(k, []).append(v)
>>> d.items()
[('blue', [2, 4]), ('red', [1]), ('yellow', [1, 3])]
\end{verbatim}
Setting the \member{default_factory} to \class{int} makes the
\class{defaultdict} useful for counting (like a bag or multiset in other
languages):
\begin{verbatim}
>>> s = 'mississippi'
>>> d = defaultdict(int)
>>> for k in s:
d[k] += 1
>>> d.items()
[('i', 4), ('p', 2), ('s', 4), ('m', 1)]
\end{verbatim}
When a letter in first encountered, it is missing from the mapping, so the
\member{default_factory} function calls \function{int()} to supply a default
count of zero. The increment operation then builds of the count for each
letter. This technique makes counting simpler and faster than an equivalent
technique using \method{dict.get()}:
\begin{verbatim}
>>> d = {}
>>> for k in s:
d[k] = d.get(k, 0) + 1
>>> d.items()
[('i', 4), ('p', 2), ('s', 4), ('m', 1)]
\end{verbatim}
Setting the \member{default_factory} to \class{set} makes the
\class{defaultdict} useful for building a dictionary of sets:
\begin{verbatim}
>>> s = [('red', 1), ('blue', 2), ('red', 3), ('blue', 4), ('red', 1), ('blue', 4)]
>>> d = defaultdict(set)
>>> for k, v in s:
d[k].add(v)
>>> d.items()
[('blue', set([2, 4])), ('red', set([1, 3]))]
\end{verbatim}
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