dictionary-question

[wl]

Hello,

Bas van Gils wrote:

 
> My current "workaround" is this:
> 
>     >>> if foo.has_key("bar"):
>     ...     foo["bar"] += 1
>     ... else:
>     ...     foo["bar"] = 1
>     ...
>     >>> foo
>     {'bar': 1}
> 
> (this is just an demonstration of the behavior I don't get ... I want to
> use it in a bigger script). 
> 
> Now, can someone please explain why the 
> 
>     foo.get("bar",0) += 1
> 
> won't work ... and what might be a better sollution then my current
> workaround?


Better sollution:

foo["bar"] = foo.get("bar",0) +1

That works as expected.

foo.get("bar",0) += 1  won't work because you try
to assign something to a function.
Thist is the same as foo.get("bar",0) = foo.get("bar",0) + 1
  ( or same with __add__( ... ) )
The function is not evaluted, all is parsed from right to left.
But if it goes the other way it makes no sense to add 1 to the
integer value 0. ( foo.get("bar",0) returns 0 if bar is not present
into foo, not foo["bar"] with value 0 ).

bye by Wolfgang