Clarify that DictMixin is still useful. Only the UserDict class was supplanted.

This commit is contained in:
Raymond Hettinger 2005-01-04 21:25:00 +00:00
parent d61788b9ae
commit 31043cd6d8
1 changed files with 11 additions and 13 deletions

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@ -4,22 +4,20 @@
\declaremodule{standard}{UserDict}
\modulesynopsis{Class wrapper for dictionary objects.}
\note{This module is available for backward compatibility only. If
you are writing code that does not need to work with versions of
Python earlier than Python 2.2, please consider subclassing directly
from the built-in \class{dict} type.}
This module defines a class that acts as a wrapper around
dictionary objects. It is a useful base class for
your own dictionary-like classes, which can inherit from
them and override existing methods or add new ones. In this way one
can add new behaviors to dictionaries.
The module also defines a mixin defining all dictionary methods for
classes that already have a minimum mapping interface. This greatly
simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable for
The module defines a mixin, \class{DictMixin}, defining all dictionary
methods for classes that already have a minimum mapping interface. This
greatly simplifies writing classes that need to be substitutable for
dictionaries (such as the shelve module).
This also module defines a class, \class{UserDict}, that acts as a wrapper
around dictionary objects. The need for this class has been largely
supplanted by the ability to subclass directly from \class{dict} (a feature
that became available starting with Python version 2.2). Prior to the
introduction of \class{dict}, the \class{UserDict} class was used to
create dictionary-like sub-classes that obtained new behaviors by overriding
existing methods or adding new ones.
The \module{UserDict} module defines the \class{UserDict} class
and \class{DictMixin}: