In C++ often do something like this:

typedef map<int, vector<int> > MyIndexType;

Where I then use it like this:

MyIndexType myIndex;
for( ... some loop ...)
{
  myIndex[someId].push_back(someVal);
}

If there was no entry in the map the code will insert a new empty vector and then append to it.

In Python it would look like this:

myIndex = {}

for (someId,someVal) in collection:
   try:
      myIndex[someId].append(someVal)
   except KeyError:
      myIndex[someId] = [someVal]

The try except is a bit ugly here. Is there a way to tell the dictionary an object type to insert when a KeyError is encountered at dictionary declaration time?

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