Populating a list/array by index in Python?

Question

Is this possible:

myList = []

myList[12] = \'a\'
myList[22] = \'b\'
myList[32] = \'c\'
myList[42] = \'d\'

When I try, I get:

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Answer 1

For a "sparse list" you could use a dict instead:

mylist = {}
mylist[12] = 'a'

etc. If you want an actual list (initialize it with [], not (), of course!-) you need to fill the un-set slots to _some_thing, e.g. None, by a little auxiliary function or by subclassing list.