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[Python-Dev] Proposal: defaultdict

Adam Olsen rhamph at gmail.com
Fri Feb 17 15:13:51 CET 2006 
On 2/16/06, Guido van Rossum <guido at python.org> wrote:
> A bunch of Googlers were discussing the best way of doing the
> following (a common idiom when maintaining a dict of lists of values
> relating to a key, sometimes called a multimap):
>
>   if key not in d: d[key] = []
>   d[key].append(value)
>
> An alternative way to spell this uses setdefault(), but it's not very readable:
>
>   d.setdefault(key, []).append(value)

I'd like to see it done passing a factory function (and with a better name):

d.getorset(key, list).append(value)

The name is slightly odd but it is effective.  Plus it avoids creating
a new class when a slight tweak to an existing one will do.


> Over lunch with Alex Martelli, he proposed that a subclass of dict
> with this behavior (but implemented in C) would be a good addition to
> the language. It looks like it wouldn't be hard to implement. It could
> be a builtin named defaultdict. The first, required, argument to the
> constructor should be the default value. Remaining arguments (even
> keyword args) are passed unchanged to the dict constructor.

-1 (atleast until you can explain why that's better than .getorset())

--
Adam Olsen, aka Rhamphoryncus
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