Use .get() in MultiD Assoc Array?

[Paul]

On Thursday, 30 August 2012 at 18:29:28 UTC, Paul wrote:
> On Thursday, 30 August 2012 at 18:20:02 UTC, Philippe Sigaud 
> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 7:18 PM, Paul <phshaffer at gmail.com> 
>> wrote:
>>> From the book a way to respond to a non-existent key in an 
>>> assoc. array:
>>>
>>> assert(aa["hello"] == "ciao");
>>> // Key "hello" exists, therefore ignore the second argume
>>> assert(aa.get("hello", "salute") == "ciao");
>>> // Key "yo" doesn’t exist, return the second argument
>>> assert(aa.get("yo", "buongiorno") == "buongiorno");
>>>
>>> Should this work in multidimensional arrays?
>>>
>>> aa.get("key1" "key2" "key2", "nonexistent") == "sometext"
>>
>> D multi-key associative arrays do not exist as such, they are
>> associative arrays inside one another. When you write
>>
>> int[string][string][double] aa;
>>
>> you can use get() on aa, but only on its keys, which are of 
>> type
>> double, whereas its values are of type int[string][string].
>>
>> I guess an effect similar to what you're asking can be 
>> obtained by
>> using a tuple as a key:
>>
>> import std.typecons;
>> int[Tuple!(string,string,double)] aa;
>>
>> auto p = aa.get(tuple("abc","def", 3.14), 0);  // 0 is the 
>> default value.
>
> my array is of the form string[string][string][string] abc;

Maybe I'm not going about my project from the best angle?  
Another problem I have is when I go to printout my array, being 
associative, it is not in the order I built it.  It would help 
greatly if I could print it in order.  Maybe I should look into 
this "tuple" thing more.  As well I would like to be able to 
check for the existence of a particular "key" quickly without 
setting up one those three-tier foreach iteration loops.