> In the end my program will have to create a printed representation of a > certain number of "things" ... each thing will also have to have a series > of > other attributes ... which will change during the process of assigning > content (for instance: once content 'A' is assigned to foo, bar > immediately > following may well change some attribute ...
Things with attributes and varying behaviour is almost a definition of objects. There may be a clue there... > contemporaneaous one... sounds a mess ? It is ... also, the rules > by which A and B influence the content will have to be modifiable > by the user.) Dynamic rules are always tricky to get right however there are a couple of design patterns that can be adapted in the form of the visitor and strategy patterns. If your visitor pattern uses a strategy you get a customisable set of behaviours. But it depends a little on just how complex the rules get... > question is: do you believe it would be better to code a series of > functions > to interact with my dictionary and keep data, attributes etc. in lists Almost never. If its only one or two functions maybe but the minute it gets beyond a couple a class will almost always be better. The overhead of a Python class definition is tiny compared to the benefits. > Where could I read up something about relative advantages / disadvantages > of each approach ? General OO design books are the only place I suspect. Try it both ways and learn from experience is the other alternative. Alan G Author of the learn to program web tutor http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
