[Python-ideas] dict.setdefault_call(), or API variations thereupon

[Chris Barker]

On Fri, Nov 2, 2018 at 7:49 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:

> Consider the use-case where you want to pass a different default value
> to the dict each time:
>

exactly - the "default" is per call, not the same for the whole dict.
though again, how common is this?


>     d.setdefault(key, expensive_function(1, 2, 3))
>     d.setdefault(key, expensive_function(4, 8, 16))
>     d.setdefault(key, expensive_function(10, 100, 1000))
>

also -- aside from performance, if expensive_function() has side effects,
you may really not want to call it when you don't need to (not that that
would be well-designed code, but...)

and of course, you can always simply do:

if key in d:
    val = d[key]
else:
    val = expensive_function(4, 8, 16)
    d[key] = val

sure, it requires looking up the key twice, but doesn't call the function
unnecessarily.

So it's a pretty small subset of cases, where this would be needed.

defaultdict won't help, because your factory function takes no
> arguments: there's no way to supply arguments for the factory.
>

maybe that's a feature defaultdict should have?

-CHB




> __missing__ won't help, because it only receives the key, not arbitrary
> arguments.
>
> We can of course subclass dict and give it a method with the semantics
> we want:
>
>     d.my_setdefault(key, expensive_function, args=(1, 2, 3), kw={})
>
> but it would be nicer and more expressive if we could tell the
> interpreter "don't evaluate expensive_function(...) unless you really
> need it".
>
> Other languages have this -- I believe it is called "Call By Need" or
> "Call By Name", depending on the precise details of how it works. I call
> it delayed evaluation, and Python already has it, but only in certain
> special syntactic forms:
>
>     spam and <delayed expression>
>     spam or <delayed expression>
>     <delayed expression> if condition else <delayed expression>
>
> There are others: e.g. the body of functions, including lambda. But
> functions are kinda heavyweight to make and build and call.
>
>
>
> --
> Steve
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>



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