[Python-Dev] function for counting items in a sequence (original) (raw)

Greg Ewing greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Sun Apr 8 03:29:35 CEST 2007

Steven Bethard wrote:

Guido commented in the tracker that it would be worth discussing whether that last item (itemcounts['d']) should return 0 (as a defaultdict would) or raise KeyError (as a dict would).

If you've asked for a count of 'd's, and there aren't any 'd's, the most sensible answer would seem to be 0, not an exception.

Also it would be a useful property if you were guaranteed that all items in the input sequence are usable as keys in the result without causing an exception.

-- Greg

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