Two words: backward compatibility. To lose that method now would break thousands of existing programs. The 2.4 library would probably experience breakage too ... let's see:I haven't heard of any plans to deprecate the dictionary has_key method, as the "in" keyword makes it obsolete.
i.e. if key in dict:
instead of if dict.has_key():
Is there some reason to keep has_key?
$ find /lib/python2.4/ -name "*.py" -exec grep has_key {} \; | wc -l 587
Oops!
The method might disappear in Python 3.0, when we will be allowed to break backward compatibility - you are correct in saying it's no longer necessary.
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