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PEP218: Representing the empty set

John Roth newsgroups at jhrothjr.com
Tue Feb 17 16:56:18 EST 2004 
"Andrew McLean" <spam-trap-095 at at-andros.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:Eakvp5MXQnMAFwqT at at-andros.demon.co.uk...
> Looking at PEP218 there is a discussion about the most appropriate way
> of representing the empty set. The two alternatives proposed are {} and
> {-}. I was wondering why either of these is needed. Why not just use
> set()?. It is only two more characters than {-} and a bit more explicit.
>
> Similarly, I find myself initialising dictionaries with dict() rather
> than {}.
>
> Am I missing something?

A very minor oversight. This discussion only makes sense in
the context of having a set literal. The 2.3 set implementation
certainly didn't, and the latest 2.4 development documentation
(Feb 12) also doesn't, so the discussion is moot.

John Roth
>
> -- 
> Andrew McLean
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