What is the best way to store some distinct string?

[gunbuster363]

Just as the title.
I want to store some strings inside the program, and later I may store them(the string) in a text file. And I do not want duplicating strings.

As I learned from school, I should use a hash table for it, but I may build a bad hash table. So, I would like to ask all of you, is there someway I can do it like I said in python?

Thanks.

[kudresov]

If you do not have many strings, array of string should work. Normally you shouldn't worry about python efficency it has quite good code optimisation and python is not c it is not made for speed, so I would keep it simple and use something like array of strings.

[gunbuster363]

but I want distinct strings.........and I don't want to loop it over to see if there is a existed string of the same.

[Gribouillis]

but I want distinct strings.........and I don't want to loop it over to see if there is a existed string of the same.

You can use a set of strings

s = set(["hello", "world"])
s.add("anotherstring")
s.add("hello")
print s

or a dictionary (dict). Dict is the name of 'hash table' in python.

[vegaseat]

Just for the fun of Python ...

# using the Python local dictionary vars()
# you can dump/save and load mystr_dict with module pickle

def mystrings():
    s1 = 'I '
    s2 = 'like '
    s3 = 'Python'
    # in this case vars() is local to this function
    return vars()

mystr_dict = mystrings()

print(mystr_dict)  # {'s3': 'Python', 's2': 'like', 's1': 'I'}

# add mystr_dict to vars() local to __main__
vars = vars().update(mystr_dict)

print(s1+s2+s3)  # I like Python

[lrh9]

Gribouillis makes some good suggestions.

As for storing the data to a file there are really two standard, commonplace options that I think are suited to this.

I'd either pickle or marshal the object.

pickle and marshal can store and retrieve a Python object on file.

Both are similar, but pickle creates a file that will work across platforms and marshal creates a file that will only work on a type of system it is created on.

I read another post you have, and if structured text is necessary I'd try to devise a solution using json, but I'm not familiar with it so I can't help you there.