On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 10:10 AM, Sven R. Kunze <srku...@mail.de> wrote:
> Yes, and easily written as above. What significant advantage would it > have to spell the above as: > > x = alist.get(pos, default_val) > > It's a couple characters shorter in the proposed version. I guess I'll > concede that needing the odd indexing at the end to get the scalar is > slightly ugly. > > 1. advantage: it looks like dict access -> allows duck typing (oh how > often I'd missed that) > 2. advantage: no try except > 3. advantage: no weird workaround with slices and additional item access > How often would you duck-type "access either an integer position or a named key in a collection?" I'm all for duck typing, but it feels like those are a pretty different pattern. For example, I know that if a list has something at index 10 it also has something at index 9. I absolutely *do not* know that if a dict has something at key 'g' it also has something at key 'f'. -- Keeping medicines from the bloodstreams of the sick; food from the bellies of the hungry; books from the hands of the uneducated; technology from the underdeveloped; and putting advocates of freedom in prisons. Intellectual property is to the 21st century what the slave trade was to the 16th.
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