deprecation of has_key?

[Terry Reedy]

"Steven Bethard" <steven.bethard at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:dfWdnZdcUZbqX_rfRVn-vw at comcast.com...
> Ahh, ok.  Now I understand.  I think you could probably search the 
> python-dev archives and see why the decision was made as it was.  For 
> pretty much all my purposes, "key in dict" is much more useful than "item 
> in dict".  Practicality beats Purity and all. ;)

In '[for] x in mydict:', x could potentially be key, value, or item-pair. 
All three were considered and discussed -- I believe on clp-- and key 
chosen as the most useful.  A specific analogy brought forth was the phone 
book, a mapping of names to phone number and maybe address.  The decision 
was definite closer to a coin-toss to a no-brainer.

Terry J. Reedy