I would like to get everyone's thoughts on two new dictionary methods:
+1 count ? appendlist
The proposed names could possibly be improved (perhaps tally() is more active and clear than count()).
IMO 'tally' is exactly the right method name
One issue is with negative increments reaching zero i.e., deleting the key once the tally goes to 0: this behavior would match the automatic key creation.
The appendlist() method is not as versatile as setdefault() which can be used
Simpler list initialization augmentation would be very handy - but I would also like the equivalent functionality sets (don't care about dicts of dicts though).
Given the difference in set/list augmentation methods, this may present a challenge. Alternatively, perhaps dict_of_list and dict_of_set could become specialized containers - they might then have value_append/value_extend and value_add methods respectively. I imagine (without any basis in fact) that it would also be possible the optimize the performance of large mappings of containers compared with the generic dict.
Michael
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