Logged In: YES user_id=34209 Super, looks great, excellent cut-and-paste work there, Barry. Let's check this in while Guido is too busy talking to people at Pycon to notice. ;-)
Logged In: YES user_id=849994 I'm not entirely sure how to explain to newcomers what the hell the difference between getdefault and setdefault is, and what their names have to do with it.
Logged In: YES user_id=80475 -1 on adding this method. The new defaultdict goes a long way toward meeting many needs. IMO, the granular case is better met with a simple try/except. Please, let's not bloat the dict API just because we can. The original setdefault was problematic not just because of its name and unnecessary instantiations. There were also readability issues from jamming too much on one line. Also, one we've added __missing__ support and defaultdict, the environment has become more crowded with variations on solutions to a similar problems. Adding too many solutions makes all of them harder to choose from. The mapping API is too important to bloat with this method -- we need to be going the other direction (removing has_key and setdefault). Assigning to Guido for pronouncement.
Logged In: YES user_id=6380 Sorry, no go. Yet another method with subtly different semantics is not helping. My expectation is that collections.defaultdict will address the need adequately (and it addresses a number of other needs that getdefault() doesn't address). If not, let's revisit this in 2.6.
