Question

Is there builtin code that indexes a list via an index function? Or do I have to do this:

def index(alist, keyExtractor):
    result = dict()
    for item in alist:
        key = keyExtractor(item)
        if key is not None:
            result[key] = item
    return result

Answer 1

You probably want to use a dictionary comprehension:

>>> import operator
>>> keyExtractor=operator.itemgetter(1) # for demonstration purposes

>>> aList = [('a', 'foo'), ('b', 'bar'), ('q', 'quux')]
>>> d = {keyExtractor(x):x for x in aList}
>>> if None in d:
      del d[None]
>>> d
{'quux': ('q', 'quux'), 'foo': ('a', 'foo'), 'bar': ('b', 'bar')}