Generics/templates in python?

Question

How does python handle generic/template type scenarios? Say I want to create an external file \"BinaryTree.py\" and have it handle binary trees, but for any data type.

Answer 1

Since python is dynamically typed, this is super easy. In fact, you'd have to do extra work for your BinaryTree class not to work with any data type.

For example, if you want the key values which are used to place the object in the tree available within the object from a method like key() you just call key() on the objects. For example:

class BinaryTree(object):

    def insert(self, object_to_insert):
        key = object_to_insert.key()

Note that you never need to define what kind of class object_to_insert is. So long as it has a key() method, it will work.

The exception is if you want it to work with basic data types like strings or integers. You'll have to wrap them in a class to get them to work with your generic BinaryTree. If that sounds too heavy weight and you want the extra efficiency of actually just storing strings, sorry, that's not what Python is good at.