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Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist?

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On 19/01/13 15:15, Chris Rebert wrote:
> On Friday, January 18, 2013, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>
>     I wish to add a key to a dict only if it doesn't already exist, but
>     do it
>     in a thread-safe manner.
>
>     The naive code is:
>
>     if key not in dict:
>          dict[key] = value
>
>
>     but of course there is a race condition there: it is possible that
>
>     another thread may have added the same key between the check and the
>     store.
>
>     How can I add a key in a thread-safe manner?
>
>
> I'm not entirely sure, but have you investigated dict.setdefault() ?

dict.setdefault() was not atomic on older python version, they were made 
atomic in Python 2.7.3 and Python 3.2.3.

See bug13521 in the issue tracker http://bugs.python.org/issue13521

PS: The bug tracker seems down at the moment, so pulled this from 
Google's cache:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:59PO_F-VEfwJ:bugs.python.org/issue13521+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=ubuntu

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Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-01-19 04:07 +0000
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Chris Rebert <clp2@rebertia.com> - 2013-01-18 20:15 -0800
    Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2013-01-19 10:31 +0000
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Lie Ryan <lie.1296@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 16:00 +1100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Vito De Tullio <vito.detullio@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 08:25 +0100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Vito De Tullio <vito.detullio@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 08:27 +0100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Mitya Sirenef <msirenef@lightbird.net> - 2013-01-19 02:35 -0500
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Peter Otten <__peter__@web.de> - 2013-01-19 09:02 +0100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Vito De Tullio <vito.detullio@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 09:16 +0100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Mitya Sirenef <msirenef@lightbird.net> - 2013-01-19 03:18 -0500
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Vito De Tullio <vito.detullio@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 09:19 +0100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2013-01-19 19:23 +1100
  Re: Safely add a key to a dict only if it does not already exist? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2013-01-19 08:04 -0500

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