Confusing docstring on dns.Set

[Zaczero]

Describe the bug
The docstring says "these sets are based on lists and are thus indexable".

Specifically,

1. The Set is based on dicts and not lists.
2. The __getitem__ method is very inefficient, whenever scalar index is requested, it iterates over half of the dictionary on average. The current docstring suggests that such indexing operation would be fairly inexpensive.

My personal recommendation would be to use Python standard set and not to reinvent the wheel. The CPython sets are very well optimized for both CPU and memory usage. It will also reduce code maintenance and package installation size 🙂.

Context:

• dnspython version 2.6.1
• Python version 3.12.2

[Zaczero]

I can see that some classes override the Set methods, perhaps we could do:

class Test(set):  # <-- inherits from set
    def add(self, __element) -> None:
        super().add(5)
        return super().add(__element)


x = Test()
x.add(3)
print(x)
# Test({3, 5})

[rthalley]

We can fix the docstring, but we are stuck with non-native sets for backwards compatibility reasons until dnspython 3.0 at least. As the comment says, the API was designed before there even were sets in Python, and there is lots of code in the wild assuming you can subscript an RRset, especially with [0].

[rthalley]

Documentation improved.

[Zaczero]

Alright! Thank you for your time and understanding. Ping me whenever you start accepting donations.