[Doc-SIG] dict.update docstring
A.M. Kuchling
amk at amk.ca
Sat Oct 4 03:16:04 CEST 2008
I've been looking at the docstrings of the built-in types, and I found
the docstring for dict.update() really hard to understand.
| update(...)
| D.update(E, **F) -> None. Update D from E and F: for k in E: D[k] = E[k]
| (if E has keys else: for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v) then: for k in F: D[k] = F[k]
The parenthetical 'if E has keys' is the most unreadable part; it's
actually referring to the keys() method.
My proposed rewrite (as formatted by pydoc):
| update(...)
| D.update(E, **F) -> None. Update D from dict/iterable E and F.
| If E has a .keys() method, does: for k in E: D[k] = E[k]
| If E lacks .keys() method, does: for (k, v) in E: D[k] = v
| In either case, this is followed by: for k in F: D[k] = F[k]
Does this seem clear, or should it be expanded more? dict.update is
pretty complicated!
--amk
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