30 Aug
2005
30 Aug
'05
11:53 a.m.
Tim Peters wrote:
Anyone remember why setdefault's second argument is optional?
Some kind of symmetry with get, probably. if d.get(x) returns None if x doesn't exist, it makes some kind of sense that d.setdefault(x) returns None as well. Anyone remember why nobody managed to come up with a better name for setdefault (which is probably the worst name ever given to a method in the standard Python distribution) ? (if I were in charge, I'd rename it to something more informative. I'd also add a "join" built-in (similar to the good old string.join) and a "textfile" built- in (similar to open("U") plus support for encodings). but that's me. I want my code nice and tidy.) </F>