Question

I ran into a weird problem today, here is some example code

from collections import defaultdict

class Counter:
    hits = 0
    visitors = set()

    def addHit(self, ip):
        self.hits += 1
        self.visitors.add(ip)

d = defaultdict(Counter)
d['a'].addHit('1.1.1')
d['a'].addHit('2.2.2')
d['b'].addHit('3.3.3')

print d['a'].hits, d['a'].visitors
print d['b'].hits, d['b'].visitors

Expected Result:

2 set(['1.1.1', '2.2.2'])
1 set(['3.3.3'])

Actual Result:

2 set(['1.1.1', '3.3.3', '2.2.2'])
1 set(['1.1.1', '3.3.3', '2.2.2'])

Why are the visitor sets sharing data between what I thought should be separate instances of the Counter class. Shouldn’t each input point to a specific instance?

What makes this more difficult to understand is that the hit counter seems to work fine and keep things separate.

Can anyone help me understand what’s going on here or how to fix it?

Answer 1

I suspect your visitors set is a class variable and not an instance variable.

Nothing to do with defaultdicts behaviour.

Try:

class Counter:
    def __init__(self):
        self.hits = 0
        self.visitors = set()

    def addHit(self, ip):
        self.hits += 1
        self.visitors.add(ip)

EDIT:
Nothing to do with your questions, but just some ideas how to expand your counter:

#! /usr/bin/python3.2

class Counter:
    def __init__(self):
        self.__hits = 0
        self.__visitors = {}

    def addHit(self, ip):
        self.__hits += 1
        if ip not in self.__visitors:
            self.__visitors [ip] = 0
        self.__visitors [ip] += 1

    @property
    def hits (self):
        return self.__hits

    @property
    def uniqueHits (self):
        return len (self.__visitors)

    @property
    def ips (self):
        return (ip for ip in self.__visitors)

    def __getitem__ (self, ip):
        return 0 if ip not in self.__visitors else self.__visitors [ip]

c = Counter ()

c.addHit ('1.1.1.1')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.1')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.1')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.1')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.2')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.2')
c.addHit ('1.1.1.3')

print (c.hits)
print (c.uniqueHits)
for ip in c.ips:
    print (ip, c [ip] )