[Python-ideas] Add "default" kwarg to list.pop()

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 08:41:28PM +1100, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 8:24 PM Nicolas Rolin <nicolas.rolin at tiime.fr> wrote:
> >
> >
> > As a user I always found a bit disurbing that dict pop method have a default while list and set doesn't.
> > While it is way more computationally easy to check wether a list or a set is empty that to check if a key is in a dict, it still create a signature difference for no real reason (having a default to a built-in in python is pretty standard).
> > It would be nice if every built-in/method of built-in type that returns a value and raise in some case have access to a default instead of raise, and not having to check the doc to see if it supports a default.
> >
> 
> https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0463/ wants to say hi.


PEP 463 is too busy crying bitter tears in the corner after being 
rejected to say "Hi".

I don't think this is the same thing: PEP 464 is about being able to 
catch arbitrary exceptions in arbitrary expressions in an ad-hoc manner. 
Nicholas' suggestion is about making a consistent strategy of avoiding 
the need to catch exceptions.

I don't think I would agree with a broad rule "anything that raises can 
return a default value" -- I don't think it makes sense to have, let's 
say, len(obj, default=2). But on a case-by-case basis, it works for me.

If this were Ruby, and we could monkey-patch the built-in types, my 
reasoning would go something like this:

- if I have to write "L.pop() if L else default", I should write 
  it in place;

- the third time I write it in any one module, I ought to factor
  it out into a helper function;

- the third time I write the helper function, I ought to just
  monkey-patch the built-in and be done with it.


I haven't been counting, but I'm pretty sure I've written "get(L, 
index, default)" and "pop(L, index, default)" helpers at least three 
times now. Possibly even three times each :-)

In Python, of course, we can't add methods to built-ins. But I 
think this functionality makes good sense, especially once we remember 
that pop takes an optional index. Spot the bug in this:

    L.pop(idx) if len(L) > idx else default



-- 
Steve