Question

As a way to get used to python, I am trying to translate some of my code to python from Autohotkey_L.
I am immediately running into tons of choices for collection objects.
Can you help me figure out a built in type or a 3rd party contributed type that has as much as possible, the functionality of the AutoHotkey_L object type and its methods.

AutoHotkey_L Objects have features of a python dict, list, and a class instance.

I understand that there are tradeoffs for space and speed, but I am just interested in functionality rather than optimization issues.

Answer 1

Don’t write Python as <another-language>. Write Python as Python.

The data structure should be chosen just to have the minimal ability you need to use.

• list — an ordered sequence of elements, with 1 flexible end.
• collections.deque — an ordered sequence of elements, with 2 flexible ends (e.g. a queue).
• set / frozenset — an unordered sequence of unique elements.
• collections.Counter — an unordered sequence of non-unique elements.
• dict — an unordered key-value relationship.
• collections.OrderedDict — an ordered key-value relationship.
• bytes / bytearray — a list of bytes.
• array.array — a homogeneous list of primitive types.

Looking at the interface of Object,

• dict would be the most suitable for finding a value by key
• collections.OrderedDict would be the most suitable for the push/pop stuff.

when you need MinIndex / MaxIndex, where a sorted key-value relationship (e.g. red black tree) is required. There’s no such type in the standard library, but there are 3rd party implementations.