Pythonic way for missing dict keys

[Alex Popescu]

Neil Cerutti <horpner at yahoo.com> wrote in 
news:slrnfa2325.n4.horpner at FIAD06.norwich.edu:

> On 2007-07-20, Alex Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all!
>>
>> I am pretty sure this has been asked a couple of times, but I
>> don't seem to find it on the archives (Google seems to have a
>> couple of problems lately).
>>
>> I am wondering what is the most pythonic way of dealing with missing 
>> keys and default values.
>>
>> According to my readings one can take the following approaches:
> 
> There's also the popular collections.defaultdict. 
> 
> Usually, the get method of normal dicts is what I want. I use a
> defaultdict only when the implicit addition to the dictionary of
> defaulted elements is what I really want.
> 

This looks like the closest to my needs, but in my case the default value 
involves the creation of a custom object instance that is taking parameters 
from the current execution context, so I am not very sure I can use it.

./alex
--
.w( the_mindstorm )p.