reduce() anomaly?

[David C. Fox]

Stephen C. Waterbury wrote:

> This seems like it ought to work, according to the
> description of reduce(), but it doesn't.  Is this
> a bug, or am I missing something?
> 
> Python 2.3.2 (#1, Oct 20 2003, 01:04:35)
> [GCC 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)] on linux2
> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>  >>> d1 = {'a':1}
>  >>> d2 = {'b':2}
>  >>> d3 = {'c':3}
>  >>> l = [d1, d2, d3]
>  >>> d4 = reduce(lambda x, y: x.update(y), l)
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <lambda>
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'update'
>  >>> d4 = reduce(lambda x, y: x.update(y), l, {})
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
>   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <lambda>
> AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'update'
> 
> - Steve.

The update method updates the dictionary in place, but returns None. 
Thus, after the first call to x.update(y), reduce is trying to call 
x.update(y) with x equal to None.  Hence the error.

Alternatives which work include

     def rupdate(d, other):
         d.update(other)
         return d

     reduce(rupdate, l)

and

     d = {}
     map(lambda x: d.update(x), l)

David