Why dict.setdefault() has value as optional?

Lars Liedtke liedtke at punkt.de
Wed Feb 2 08:24:45 EST 2022


This is a quite philosophical queston if you look at it in general:
"What value do you give a variable, that is not set?"

You are right, at first it seems strange to have a default of None. But 
how do you want to signal that no default is set yet? Especially if you 
think of a dict that can have multiple keys with each different values 
of different types?

Have fun in the rabbithole ;-)

Cheers

Lars

Am 02.02.22 um 13:54 schrieb Marco Sulla:
> Just out of curiosity: why dict.setdefault() has the default parameter
> that.... well, has a default value (None)? I used setdefault in the past,
> but I always specified a value. What's the use case of setting None by
> default?

-- 
punkt.de GmbH
Lars Liedtke
.infrastructure

Kaiserallee 13a	
76133 Karlsruhe

Tel. +49 721 9109 500
https://infrastructure.punkt.de
info at punkt.de

AG Mannheim 108285
Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Egeling, Daniel Lienert, Fabian Stein



More information about the Python-list mailing list