On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 11:52:41 -0400, Tim Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[Peter Hansen] >... >> I suppose I shouldn't blame setdefault() itself for being poorly named, > >No, you should blame Guido for that <wink>. > >> but it's confusing to me each time I see it in the above, because the >> name doesn't emphasize that the value is being returned, and yet that >> fact is arguably more important than the fact that a default is set! >> >> I can't think of a better name, though, although I might find "foo" less >> confusing in the above context. :-) > >I wanted to call it getorset() -- so much so that even now I sometimes >still type that instead! The "get" part reminds me that it's fetching >a value, same as dict.get(key, default) -- "or set"'ing it too if >there's not already a value to "get". If you have a fancy enough >editor, you can teach it to replace setdefault by getorset whenever >you type the former ;-) But it isn't get OR set, it's set_default_if_no_value_then_either_way_effectively_get ;-) Regards, Bengt Richter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
