Use cases for the 'setdefault' dict method

Question

The addition of collections.defaultdict in Python 2.5 greatly reduced the need for dict's setdefault method. This question is for our collective education:

1. What is setdefault still useful for, today in Python 2.6/2.7?
2. What popular use cases of setdefault were superseded with collections.defaultdict?

Answer 1

defaultdict is great when the default value is static, like a new list, but not so much if it's dynamic.

For example, I need a dictionary to map strings to unique ints. defaultdict(int) will always use 0 for the default value. Likewise, defaultdict(intGen()) always produces 1.

Instead, I used a regular dict:

nextID = intGen()
myDict = {}
for lots of complicated stuff:
    #stuff that generates unpredictable, possibly already seen str
    strID = myDict.setdefault(myStr, nextID())

Note that dict.get(key, nextID()) is insufficient because I need to be able to refer to these values later as well.

intGen is a tiny class I build that automatically increments an int and returns its value:

class intGen:
    def __init__(self):
        self.i = 0

    def __call__(self):
        self.i += 1
    return self.i

If someone has a way to do this with defaultdict I'd love to see it.

Answer 2

I use setdefault() when I want a default value in an OrderedDict. There isn't a standard Python collection that does both, but there are ways to implement such a collection.

Answer 3

The different use case for setdefault() is when you don't want to overwrite the value of an already set key. defaultdict overwrites, while setdefault() does not. For nested dictionaries it is more often the case that you want to set a default only if the key is not set yet, because you don't want to remove the present sub dictionary. This is when you use setdefault().

Example with defaultdict:

>>> from collection import defaultdict()
>>> foo = defaultdict()
>>> foo['a'] = 4
>>> foo['a'] = 2
>>> print(foo)
defaultdict(None, {'a': 2})

setdefault doesn't overwrite:

>>> bar = dict()
>>> bar.setdefault('a', 4)
>>> bar.setdefault('a', 2)
>>> print(bar)
{'a': 4}

Answer 4

Here are some examples of setdefault to show its usefulness:

"""
d = {}
# To add a key->value pair, do the following:
d.setdefault(key, []).append(value)

# To retrieve a list of the values for a key
list_of_values = d[key]

# To remove a key->value pair is still easy, if
# you don't mind leaving empty lists behind when
# the last value for a given key is removed:
d[key].remove(value)

# Despite the empty lists, it's still possible to 
# test for the existance of values easily:
if d.has_key(key) and d[key]:
    pass # d has some values for key

# Note: Each value can exist multiple times!
"""
e = {}
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Toyota')
print e
e.setdefault('Motorcycles', []).append('Yamaha')
print e
e.setdefault('Airplanes', []).append('Boeing')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Honda')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('BMW')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Toyota')
print e

# NOTE: now e['Cars'] == ['Toyota', 'Honda', 'BMW', 'Toyota']
e['Cars'].remove('Toyota')
print e
# NOTE: it's still true that ('Toyota' in e['Cars'])

Answer 5

You could say defaultdict is useful for settings defaults before filling the dict and setdefault is useful for setting defaults while or after filling the dict.

Probably the most common use case: Grouping items (in unsorted data, else use itertools.groupby)

# really verbose
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
    if key in new:
        new[key].append( value )
    else:
        new[key] = [value]


# easy with setdefault
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
    group = new.setdefault(key, []) # key might exist already
    group.append( value )


# even simpler with defaultdict 
new = defaultdict(list)
for (key, value) in data:
    new[key].append( value ) # all keys have a default already

Sometimes you want to make sure that specific keys exist after creating a dict. defaultdict doesn't work in this case, because it only creates keys on explicit access. Think you use something HTTP-ish with many headers -- some are optional, but you want defaults for them:

headers = parse_headers( msg ) # parse the message, get a dict
# now add all the optional headers
for headername, defaultvalue in optional_headers:
    headers.setdefault( headername, defaultvalue )

Answer 6

I commonly use setdefault for keyword argument dicts, such as in this function:

def notify(self, level, *pargs, **kwargs):
    kwargs.setdefault("persist", level >= DANGER)
    self.__defcon.set(level, **kwargs)
    try:
        kwargs.setdefault("name", self.client.player_entity().name)
    except pytibia.PlayerEntityNotFound:
        pass
    return _notify(level, *pargs, **kwargs)

It's great for tweaking arguments in wrappers around functions that take keyword arguments.