How to pass a C structure in Python?

Why is there no data structure in python stdlib which can be used as a sorted set?

• I'm well versed with Java and C++ and both have structures implemented as balanced binary trees that support sorted iterable sets. Python only has lists or hash tables but no structure built over balanced binary trees. In particular I want following operations which I think are fairly common and I'm unable to find a standard structure in python that can help me: O(log N) insert O(log N) find O(log N) remove O(1) iteration per element (on average), iteration from the smallest element to the largest Best I can think of is making use of heapq structure (for iteration, using nlargest with powers of 2). What is the pythonic way of going about it?

• Answer:

  At the risk of sarcasm: the Pythonic way is to stop worrying and love the slow algorithm. (Probably using a list and sorting it at each insert. On the bright side, Python's sort implementation should be O(n) when all but the last element is already sorted.) Alternatively, drop into Cython or C and write your own. Or use where somebody on the internet has already done that -- some examples come up in this search: http://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=search&term=btree Maybe one of those is good.