Chapter 7. Python Data Structures
In our examples so far, we've already seen many of the built-in Python data structures in action. You've probably also covered many of them in introductory books or tutorials. In this chapter, we'll be discussing the object-oriented features of these data structures, when they should be used instead of a regular class, and when they should not be used. In particular, we'll be covering:
- Tuples and named tuples
- Dictionaries
- Lists and sets
- How and why to extend built-in objects
- Three types of queues
Empty objects
Let's start with the most basic Python built-in, one that we've seen many times already, the one that we've extended in every class we have created: the object. Technically, we can instantiate an object without writing a subclass:
>>> o = object() >>> o.x = 5 Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'object' object...
