Duncan Booth wrote: > Diez B. Roggisch wrote: > > >>So if setdefault >>was implemented as >> >>def setdefault(self, v): >> self["SOME_DEFAULT_KEY_NAME"] = v > > > if setdefault was implemented that way then all current uses of setdefault > would throw an exception. > > setdefault takes *three* parameters: self, key, value. Once you include the > key parameter your entire argument implodes.
Yup. It does implode, leaving me thunderstruck because of my dumbness. I rarely find things in python strange or named incorrectly, but this is IMHO such a case - setdefault led me to think that using it would set a default value to return for _future_ lookups of non-existant keys. That semantics is known in e.g. ruby or java. I think a better name would be getdefault, or even get_setdefault - in oppposition to the get(key, d) form. But now that this became clear to me... I guess I can live with the name :) Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
