Why does list have no 'get' method?

[pruebauno at latinmail.com]

On Feb 7, 11:01 am, "Denis Bilenko" <denis.bile... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Holden wrote:
> > These versions differ with respect to treatment of blank lines, which
> > indicates  how easy it is to go astray in this kind of semantic
> > optimization. Your example simply wouldn't work (though you could patch
> > it up using "if line is None". (despite the use of short-circuiting
> > predicates).
> > > both examples show reduction by 3 lines.
>
> > Perhaps so, but you have to realise that Python has never valued code
> > compactness over clarity.
> > I'm not sure that your democratic wish to ensure fairness to sequences
> > will garner much support, interesting though it is in an academic sense.
>
> Thank you for the patch. My incentives are not academic though.
>
> I convinced that this
>
>     line = self._buffer.get(self._bufindex)
>     if line is None:
>         self._bufindex += 1
>         self._lineno += 1
>         self._filelineno += 1
>         return line
>     line = self.readline()
>
> is more clear than
>
>     try:
>         line = self._buffer[self._bufindex]
>     except IndexError:
>         pass
>     else:
>         self._bufindex += 1
>         self._lineno += 1
>         self._filelineno += 1
>         return line
>     line = self.readline()
>
> I mentioned 3 lines reduction just because it is
> objective, while 'more clear' is subjective.
>
> Code snippets are again not equivalent, e.g. in the
> case when self._buffer[self._bufindex] exists and is
> equal to None. Although the author could probably
> make a guarantee that is never the case.

This has been a pet peeve of mine too. So you are not completely
crazy:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/269484

There is a discussion about precisely this by Alex Martelli in the
printed version of the Python cookbook (2nd edition). I don't share
the opinion but I am not going to fight the core Python developers
over it. I don't think it is worth the effort. Python is so smooth
already, there has to be some excuse to add some cute hack to your
program once in a while :-).

dict(enumerate(lst)).get(i,default) for example although not very
efficient, looks cute. I think I like it better than my own solution.