[Tutor] Lists of duplicates

[Alan Gauld]

On 09/03/17 04:29, Alex Kleider wrote:

>> I'd probably opt for a dictionary:
>>
>> def f(lst):
>>     res = {}
>>     for item in lst:
>> 	res.setdefault(item,[]).append(item)
>>     return list(res.values())
>>
> The above works BUT
> how????

setdefault returns the current value for the key
or the default, in this case an empty list.
So we can split it in two as:

for item in lst:
   val = res.setdefault(item,[])
   val.append(item)

And since setdefault also assigns the default
to the dict if it doesn't exist we don't need
to add an extra assignment.

We could have used get() instead:

for item in lst:
    sub = res.get(item,[])
    sub.append(item)
    res[item] = sub

Is that any clearer?
Breaking setdefault() down gives something like:

try:
   sub = res[item]
except KeyError:
   res[item] = []
   sub = res[item]


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Alan G
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