Javascript style dot notation for dictionary keys unpythonic?

Question

I\'ve started to use constructs like these:

class DictObj(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.d = {}
    def __getattr__(self, m):
        return s         


        

Answer 1

It's not "wrong" to do this, and it can be nicer if your dictionaries have a strong possibility of turning into objects at some point, but be wary of the reasons for having bracket access in the first place:

1. Dot access can't use keywords as keys.
2. Dot access has to use Python-identifier-valid characters in the keys.
3. Dictionaries can hold any hashable element -- not just strings.

Also keep in mind you can always make your objects access like dictionaries if you decide to switch to objects later on.

For a case like this I would default to the "readability counts" mantra: presumably other Python programmers will be reading your code and they probably won't be expecting dictionary/object hybrids everywhere. If it's a good design decision for a particular situation, use it, but I wouldn't use it without necessity to do so.