dictionary wart

[Jesper Olsen]

Does python have a way of defining a dictionary default? 
I think not, but are there any plans to incorporate it?

Intuitively I would imagine that

a={}
a.set_default(my_default)

would do this -ie. a[my_new_key] should now return the the default
value my_default instead of creating an exception. This would be
similar to how it is done in other languages, eg. Ruby:

a={}
a.default=value

But surprisingly, in python set_default is a dictionary method used
for looking up a key...

Jesper