[Python-Dev] defaultdict proposal round three (original) (raw)

Steve Holden steve at holdenweb.com
Wed Feb 22 09:17:25 CET 2006

Greg Ewing wrote:

Raymond Hettinger wrote:

Like "autodict" could mean anything. Everything is meaningless until you know something about it. If you'd never seen Python before, would you know what 'dict' meant? If I were seeing "defaultdict" for the first time, I would need to look up the docs before I was confident I knew exactly what it did -- as I've mentioned before, my initial guess would have been wrong. The same procedure would lead me to an understanding of 'autodict' just as quickly. Maybe 'autodict' isn't the best term either -- I'm open to suggestions. But my instincts still tell me that 'defaultdict' is the best term for something else that we might want to add one day as well, so I'm just trying to make sure we don't squander it lightly. Given that the default entries behind the non-existent keys don't actually exist, something like "virtual_dict" might be appropriate.

Or "phantom_dict", or "ghost_dict".

I agree that the naming of things is important.

regards Steve

Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/

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