Chapter 4. Built-in Data Structures – list, set, dict

In this chapter we'll look at the following recipes:

• Choosing a data structure

• Building lists – literals, appending, and comprehensions

• Slicing and dicing a list

• Deleting from a list – deleting, removing, popping, and filtering

• Reversing a copy of a list

• Using set methods and operators

• Removing items from a set – remove(), pop(), and difference

• Creating dictionaries – inserting and updating

• Removing from dictionaries – the pop() method and the del statement

• Controlling the order of dict keys

• Handling dictionaries and sets in doctest examples

• Understanding variables, references, and assignment

• Making shallow and deep copies of objects

• Avoiding mutable default values for function parameters