Terry and Kent:
Thanks for your timely replies. I agree: its creator could have chosen a
more intuitive name for setdefault.
Regards,
Barry
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Terry Carroll wrote:
freq = {}
sampletext = "norwegian blue"
for char in sampletext:
>
> ... freq[char] = freq.setdefault(char,0)+1
Although I'm a big fan of setdefault() I think this particular example
is better written as
freq[char] = freq.get(char,0)+1
There is no need to s
Carroll, Barry wrote:
> Greetings:
>
> What is the purpose of the dictionary method setdefault(k[, x])?
setdefault() is perhaps badly named, but it is very useful. It doesn't
do what you think it does! From the docs:
setdefault() is like get(), except that if k is missing, x is both
return
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006, Carroll, Barry wrote:
> So, what then is the proper use of setdefault()? And, if d.setdefault
> does not actually assign a default value for d, is there a way to do
> this?
It's a somewhat misleading name, but setdefault a) looks up an entry in a
dictionary and c) returns i
Greetings:
What is the purpose of the dictionary method setdefault(k[, x])?
For example assume the following dictionary:
>>> colors = {'green':(0,255,0), 'red':(255,0,0), 'blue':(0,0,255),
>>> 'white':(255,255,255), 'black':(0,0,0)}
>>>
Now, execute the statement:
>>> colors.setdefault('black
