Raymond Hettinger <raymond.hettin...@gmail.com> added the comment:
Thanks for the suggestion. I respectfully disagree. The "core" functionality
of Counter is the ability to write c['x'] += 1 without risking a KeyError. The
add-on capability is to process an entire iterable all at once. This is
analogous to the list() builtin- where the core ability is to write s.append(e)
and there is a convenience of calling list(iterable).
Another reason the first example goes first because it is simple. It shows
counting in isolation with no other distractions (an in-vitro example).
The second example is in a more complex environment incorporating file access
and regular expressions (an in-vivo example).
FWIW, there are plenty of examples of using the += style. Here's one I use in
my Python courses:
'Scan a log file from a NASA server'
import collections, re, pprint
visited = collections.Counter()
with open('notes/nasa_19950801.log') as f:
for line in f:
mo = re.search(r'GET\s+(\S+)\s+200', line)
if mo is not None:
url = mo.group(1)
visited[url] += 1
pprint.pprint(visited.most_common(20))
I've had good luck with people understanding the docs as-is, so I'm going to
decline the suggestion. I do appreciate you taking the time to share your
thoughts.
----------
assignee: docs@python -> rhettinger
nosy: +rhettinger
resolution: -> not a bug
stage: -> resolved
status: open -> closed
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Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue32770>
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