Why is order significant?

Hey nicolaspeterson, the differences will become second nature the more you code. They each have specific uses, of course.

I usually the needs drive the choice from the main four Python containers:

• need to contain stuff and reference items by the order the items are added. But slices are available, too: choose a list
• I don’t care about order, but I want to look up items using a related unique key value (like value to color matching): choose a dict
• but what if I want something like a list but something that is unchangeable after creation: choose a tuple
• I like the uniqueness of the dict keys. Is there something that behaves like the dict keys but doesn’t have associated values? Choose a set

These four handle most of the common needs. But wait there’s more….

Check out the containers library module. It expands on the core list. I’ve used namedtuple(), deque, Counter, and defaultdict many times.

Post back if you need more help. Good luck!!!