Expert Python Programming - Third Edition

Specialized data containers from the collections module

Every data structure has its shortcomings. There is no single collection that can suit every problem, and four basic types of them (tuple, list, set, and dictionary) is still not a wide range of choices. These are the most basic and important collections that have a dedicated literal syntax. Fortunately, Python provides far more options in its standard library through the collections built-in module. Here are the most important universal data containers provided by this module:

• namedtuple(): This is a factory function for creating tuple subclasses whose indexes can be accessed as named attributes
• deque: This is a double-ended queue—a list-like generalization of stacks and queues with ...