Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Implementing OrderedDict


Like Counter, the OrderedDict is a dictionary subclass the doesn't randomize the order of dictionary items. As items are added to the OrderedDict, it remembers the order that the keys were inserted and maintains that order. Even if a new entry overwrites an existing key, the position within the dictionary doesn't change. However, if an entry is deleted, re-inserting it will place it at the end of the dictionary.

OrderedDict, being a subclasses of dict, inherit all the methods available to dictionaries. There are also three special methods available to OrderedDict:

  • popitem(last=True): It returns and removes the key:value pair at the end of the dictionary. If last is not provided or manually set to True, then the popped value is LIFO (last in, first out). If last is set to False, then the popped value is FIFO.

  • move_to_end(key, last=True): It moves the provided key to the end of the dictionary. If last is set to True, then the key moves to the right. If last is set to...