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A “frozen” dictionary for Python

(lwn.net)
191 points jwilk | 1 comments | 11 Dec 25 09:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bilsbie ◴[11 Dec 25 13:05 UTC] No.46230878[source]▶
Wow weird Mandela effect for me. I really remember this being a built and actually using it.
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aewens ◴[11 Dec 25 13:26 UTC] No.46231089[source]▶
You may be thinking of the `frozenset()` built in or the third party Python module [frozendict](https://pypi.org/project/frozendict/)?

Personally, I’ve been using a wrapper around `collections.namedtuple` as an underlying data structure to create frozen dictionaries when I’ve needed something like that for a project.

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guidopallemans ◴[11 Dec 25 13:47 UTC] No.46231303[source]▶
When you are making str -> Any dictionaries it's quite likely you're better off with dataclasses or namedtuples anyway.
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1. TheFlyingFish ◴[11 Dec 25 14:28 UTC] No.46231804[source]▶
That works if you're dealing with a known set of keys (i.e. what most statically-typed languages would call a struct). It falls down if you need something where the keys are unknowable until runtime, like a lookup table.

I do like dataclasses, though. I find them sneaking into my code more and more as time goes on. Having a declared set of properties is really useful, and it doesn't hurt either that they're syntactically nicer to use.