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Diffstat (limited to 'Doc/glossary.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Doc/glossary.rst | 41 |
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 22 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/glossary.rst b/Doc/glossary.rst index 84d0fcab9d..0f2a3a1fdf 100644 --- a/Doc/glossary.rst +++ b/Doc/glossary.rst @@ -739,28 +739,17 @@ Glossary also :term:`immutable`. named tuple - The term "named tuple" applies to any type or class that inherits from - tuple and whose indexable elements are also accessible using named - attributes. The type or class may have other features as well. - - Several built-in types are named tuples, including the values returned - by :func:`time.localtime` and :func:`os.stat`. Another example is - :data:`sys.float_info`:: - - >>> sys.float_info[1] # indexed access - 1024 - >>> sys.float_info.max_exp # named field access - 1024 - >>> isinstance(sys.float_info, tuple) # kind of tuple - True - - Some named tuples are built-in types (such as the above examples). - Alternatively, a named tuple can be created from a regular class - definition that inherits from :class:`tuple` and that defines named - fields. Such as class can be written by hand or it can be created with - the factory function :func:`collections.namedtuple`. The latter - technique also adds some extra methods that may not be found in - hand-written or built-in named tuples. + Any tuple-like class whose indexable elements are also accessible using + named attributes (for example, :func:`time.localtime` returns a + tuple-like object where the *year* is accessible either with an + index such as ``t[0]`` or with a named attribute like ``t.tm_year``). + + A named tuple can be a built-in type such as :class:`time.struct_time`, + or it can be created with a regular class definition. A full featured + named tuple can also be created with the factory function + :func:`collections.namedtuple`. The latter approach automatically + provides extra features such as a self-documenting representation like + ``Employee(name='jones', title='programmer')``. namespace The place where a variable is stored. Namespaces are implemented as @@ -1043,6 +1032,14 @@ Glossary an :term:`expression` or one of several constructs with a keyword, such as :keyword:`if`, :keyword:`while` or :keyword:`for`. + struct sequence + A tuple with named elements. Struct sequences expose an interface similar + to :term:`named tuple` in that elements can be accessed either by + index or as an attribute. However, they do not have any of the named tuple + methods like :meth:`~collections.somenamedtuple._make` or + :meth:`~collections.somenamedtuple._asdict`. Examples of struct sequences + include :data:`sys.float_info` and the return value of :func:`os.stat`. + text encoding A codec which encodes Unicode strings to bytes. |