title: How to add or increment a dictionary entry?
body: <p>I'm currently re-engaging with Python after a long absence and loving it. However, I find myself coming across a pattern over and over. I keep thinking that there must be a better way to express what I want and that I'm probably doing it the wrong way.</p>
  
  <p>The code that I'm writing is in the following form:</p>
  
  <pre><code># foo is a dictionary
  if foo.has_key(bar):
    foo[bar] += 1
  else:
    foo[bar] = 1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I'm writing this a lot in my programs. My first reaction is to push it out to a helper function, but so often the python libraries supply things like this already.</p>
  
  <p>Is there some simple little syntax trick that I'm missing? Or is this the way that it should be done?</p>