[Fredrik Lundh]
... 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) ?
I suggested a perfect name at the time: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-August/008036.html To save you from following that link, to this day I still mentally translate "setdefault" to "getorset" whenever I see it. That it didn't get that name is probably Skip's fault, for whining that "getorsetandget" would be "more accurate" <wink>. Actually, there's no evidence that Guido noticed: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-August/008059.html
(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.)
I'm not sure who is in charge, but I am sure they can be bribed ;-)