backport_collections is a backport of Python 2.7's collections module for Python 2.6.

Counter, deque, OrderedDict and namedtuple are backported. The rest of the members of the collections module are still exposed. Note though that some ABC classes are slighlty different (see known issues below).

To use it just import the desired classes from the module backport_collections. Example:

from backport_collections import Counter
from backport_collections import deque
from backport_collections import OrderedDict
from backport_collections import namedtuple

To run the tests, you need to install unittest2 and nose. Then run:

nosetests

The tests depend on Python's own test suite, which is not always installed by default. In particular, Red Hat packages it separately as python-test, so you might need to run :

sudo yum install python-test

first.

• In Python 2.6 Issue 9137 is not fixed as it complains if it gets a keyword argument named self. The error is TypeError: update() got multiple values for keyword argument 'self'. Additionally the keyword argument cannot be called other either as it will think it is the full dict. No error is raised in this case.
• In Python 2.6 Issue 8743 is not fully fixed: Set interoperability with real sets

The Python Software Foundation License.

• v0.1 (15/08/2014): Synced to revision http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/6d41f139709b