A dictionary object that uses ranges of values for keys

Question

I have need of a sort of specialized dictionary. My use case is this: The user wants to specify ranges of values (the range could be a single point as well) and assign a v

Answer 1

A dictionary is not the appropriate data structure for the operations you are describing.

If the intervals are required to never overlap then you can just build a sorted list of intervals and binary search it.

If the intervals can overlap then you have a more difficult problem to solve. To solve that problem efficiently you'll want to build an interval tree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_tree

This is a well-known data structure. See "Introduction To Algorithms" or any other decent undergraduate text on data structures.