Thanks for speaking up, Antoine.  Keep in mind that a C implementation of OrderedDict has a strict compatibility requirement with the existing pure Python one.  The Python implementation subclasses dict so the C implementation must as well.  I agree that it would be simpler otherwise.  It would have saved me a lot of headache!

As to the linked list implementation, it does the job.  I'm not trying to blaze any trails with this code.  Furthermore, my implementation does not preclude a better one replacing it.  I would welcome a better implementation.  Until that appears, my implementation is what there is. :)  Frankly, my interest does not lie in the a C OrderedDict, but in what I want to do one we have one.  Since no one was willing to do that for me <wink>, I did it myself.

That said, I feel like my implementation satisfies what is required and does so in a way that we can be satisfied with it indefinitely.  It sounds like you feel it would be worse to land it than to not have a C implementation of OrderedDict.  Obviously I don't feel the same way. :)  Regardless, I think we both feel the same way that the amount of time I've spent on this shouldn't factor into determining that.

Aside from subclassing dict and my linked list approach, do you have any other concerns?