Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist?

[Mitya Sirenef]

On 01/19/2013 02:27 AM, Vito De Tullio wrote:
> Chris Rebert wrote:
>
>>> How can I add a key in a thread-safe manner?
>> I'm not entirely sure, but have you investigated dict.setdefault() ?
> but how setdefault makes sense in this context? It's used to set a default
> value when you try to retrieve an element from the dict, not when you try to
> set a new one ...
>

I guess setdefault with a sentinel default value, then set to your
new value if d[k] is sentinel?

  - mitya


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