[Python-Dev] Proposal: defaultdict (original) (raw)

Thomas Wouters thomas at xs4all.net
Thu Feb 16 22:21:33 CET 2006

On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 01:11:49PM -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:

Over lunch with Alex Martelli, he proposed that a subclass of dict with this behavior (but implemented in C) would be a good addition to the language. It looks like it wouldn't be hard to implement. It could be a builtin named defaultdict. The first, required, argument to the constructor should be the default value. Remaining arguments (even keyword args) are passed unchanged to the dict constructor.

Should a dict subclass really change the constructor/initializer signature in an incompatible way?

-- Thomas Wouters <thomas at xs4all.net>

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