dictionary initialization

[Alex Martelli]

Jeff Shannon <jeff at ccvcorp.com> wrote:

> Also, it's not that hard to subclass dict to provide the functionality
> that you want.  I expect that googling on the c.l.p archives would turn
> up more than one recipe for a dict with default values.  (There may even
> be such a thing in the Python Cookbook.)  I know I've seen such things
> posted here (though not recently)

There are several such recipes.  The most promising IMHO is Hettinger's
'bag' class (doesn't subclass dict -- uses containment and delegation --
but it deals best with maintaining count-per-item, aka multiset or bag);
it has several bugs as posted, but I've just finished editing it for the
2n edition and it wasn't hard to clear up.  I do hope we'll have a
collections.bag in Python 2.5 one day.


Alex