On Sat, Sep 10, 2011 at 17:34, Alan Gauld <alan.ga...@btinternet.com> wrote: > On 11/09/11 00:18, Richard D. Moores wrote: > >>> So you open the file and from that point on treat it exactly like a >>> dictionary. >> >> I'm still a bit shaky about dictionaries. > > But you started the post with using a dictionary. > > Shelve is just a dictionary that lives in a file instead of memory. > If you can put data into or read it out of a dictionary then you can do the > same with shelve. > > The only complexity is you have to open the file before sing it and close it > when your done. > >> Much of what comes after that is beyond me. > > >> Thanks for your encouragement Alan, but I'm still looking among my >> Python books for a good exposition of shelve. > > You probably won't find much in books because shelve has such a specific > purpose. As a result there isn't much to say about it > if you've already covered dictionaries. > > It's a file based dictionary. So read up on dictionaries. > Then just use it. > > There are a few limitations with shelve but for most normal > cases you can ignore that and just use it like any normal > dictionary.
OK, Alan, I really will give shelve a try. Dick _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
