Datastructure choice issue

Question

I'm new to Python. I need a data structure to contain a tuple of two elements: date and file path. I need to be able to change their values from time to time, hence I'm not sure a tuple is a good idea as it is immutable. Every time I need to change it I must create a new tuple and reference it, instead of really changing its values; so, we may have a memory issue here: a lot of tuples allocated.

On the other hand, I thought of a list , but a list isn't in fixed size, so the user may potentially enter more than 2 elements, which is not ideal.

Lastly, I would also want to reference each element in a reasonable name; that is, instead of list[0] (which maps to the date) and list[1] (which maps to the file path), I would prefer a readable solution, such as associative arrays in PHP:

tuple = array()
tuple['Date'] = "12.6.15"
tuple['FilePath] = "C:\somewhere\only\we\know"

What is the Pythonic way to handle such situation?

Answer 1

Sounds like you're describing a dictionary (dict)

# Creating a dict
>>> d = {'Date': "12.6.15", 'FilePath': "C:\somewhere\only\we\know"}

# Accessing a value based on a key
>>> d['Date']
'12.6.15'

# Changing the value associated with that key
>>> d['Date'] = '12.15.15'

# Displaying the representation of the updated dict
>>> d
{'FilePath': 'C:\\somewhere\\only\\we\\know', 'Date': '12.15.15'}

Answer 2

Why not use a dictionary. Dictionaries allow you to map a 'Key' to a 'Value'. For example, you can define a dictionary like this:

dict = { 'Date' : "12.6.15", 'Filepath' : "C:\somewhere\only\we\know"}

and you can easily change it like this:

dict['Date'] = 'newDate'