Originally Posted by merlight
But not the one way I find most convenient - quickly answering the question "what's the symbolic name of this value?".
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If you want it done differently, you can always do it differently.
My experience tells me that a int-indexed, properly formed array consisting of key/value tables offers the best overall usage while still having acceptable looping performance.
Looping over the array with # and comparing a string to "something" is going to have the same performance as asking the system for the value to key "something". Because all those tables are "under the hood" are one List without allowed duplicates and one with allowed duplicates.
Also I cannot guarantee that any value will be there only once. That is simply a matter of how the data looks and the patterns/exclusiong are set.
Better ending up with the same key twice in the array (easy to diagnose) then having sometimes the one key in use, sometimes the other (hard to diagnose).