class constructors: class vs. instance defaults

[Erik Johnson]

"Erik Johnson wellkeeper com>" <ej <atdot> wrote in message
news:416472df at nntp.zianet.com...
>
>     I am rather new to Python and still learning the finer points....


Thanks to all of you who took the time to respond to my post!  I do like the

 foo_d or {}

paradigm - that's considerably cleaner.
Michael Hoffman's comments about explicitly testing against None duly noted!
:)

    And thanks to Mr. Holden for the words of encouragement - I have your
book by the way. :)
I am currently swamped with "stuff", but I browsed through enough of it to
know that Python was a viable option for us. I came into this job with PHP
already well underway. Though it has some smartly handy functions, I have
not been very impressed with it as a language overall. I am thankful I have
a cool boss who listens to what I think and so I think PHP, at this "shop"
anyway, is on its way out.  :)  I hope to spend some more time digging into
it (them - both the book and Python itself) soon!

Thanks again!
-ej