magical expanding hash

[Giovanni Bajo]

braver wrote:

> Also, what's the shortest python idiom for get_or_set in expression?

dict.setdefault, as I already explained to you.

Again, I'd like to point out that what you're doing is *not* the correct
Pythonic way of doing things. In Python, there is simply no implicit
sub-dicts creation, nor implicit type inference from operators. And there
are very good reason for that. Python is a strongly typed languages: objects
have a type and keep it, they don't change it when used with different
operators. setdefault() is you get'n'set, everything else has to be made
explicit for a good reason. Strong typing has its virtues, let me give you a
link about this:

http://wingware.com/python/success/astra
See specifically the paragraph "Python's Error Handling Improves Robustness"

I believe you're attacking the problem from a very bad point of view.
Instead of trying to write a Python data structure which behaves like
Perl's, convert a Perl code snippet into Python, using the *Pythonic* way of
doing it, and then compare things. Don't try to write Perl in Python, just
write Python and then compare the differences.
-- 
Giovanni Bajo