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

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri Feb 17 23:13:14 CET 2006

Adam Olsen wrote:

Still -1. It's better, but it violates the principle of encapsulation by mixing how-you-use-it state with what-it-stores state. In doing that it has the potential to break an API documented as accepting a dict. Code that expects d[key] to raise an exception (and catches the resulting KeyError) will now silently "succeed".

Of course it will, and without quotes. That's the whole point.

I believe that necessitates a PEP to document it.

You are missing the rationale of the PEP process. The point is not documentation. The point of the PEP process is to channel and collect discussion, so that the BDFL can make a decision. The BDFL is not bound at all to the PEP process.

To document things, we use (or should use) documentation.

Regards, Martin

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