Mastering Python Networking - Second Edition

Mapping

Python provides one mapping type, called the dictionary. The dictionary is what I think of as a poor man's database because it contains objects that can be indexed by keys. This is often referred to as the associated array or hashing table in other languages. If you have used any of the dictionary-like objects in other languages, you will know that this is a powerful type, because you can refer to the object with a human-readable key. This key will make more sense for the poor guy who is trying to maintain and troubleshoot the code. That guy could be you only a few months after you wrote the code and troubleshooting at 2 a.m.. The object in the dictionary value can also be another data type, such as a list. You can create a dictionary ...