Perlish dictionary behavior

[Chris Liechti]

fallen at leveltwo.com (Fred Allen) wrote in 
news:72976037.0406081556.6d4dd9e7 at posting.google.com:

> Mr. Brewer:
> 
> I fruitlessly tried your "thing counter", as you can see below. 
> 
>>>> class AllThingsStartAtZero(dict):
> ...      def getitem (self, key):

it's __getitem__  note the underlines.

> ...           return dict.get(self, key, 0)
> ...      
>>>> thingCounts = AllThingsStartAtZero()
>>>> for thing in ('a','b','c','d','a'):
> ...      thingCounts[thing] += 1
> ...      
> Traceback (most recent call last):
>   File "<interactive input>", line 2, in ?
> KeyError: 'a'
>>>> thingCounts
> {}
> 
> Reason tells me it should work for me using...
> 
> PythonWin 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02) [MSC v.1200 32 bit
> (Intel)] on win32.
> 
> ...as it did for you. The runtime interpreter, however, says
> otherwise. Can you see what I've done wrong...I can't?
> 
> With thanks in advance, I am,
> 
> Respectfully yours,
> 
> Fred Allen