Why only add the functionality to get(), what about search()?

Also, why not just catch KeyError and set the default value?

what about search()?

I'm on the fence but with search(). When searching you're potentially getting back an iterator and it feels weird to populate that with a default value. I haven't come across a use case where I've wanted a default value with search(), but I'm happy to add it if you think it would be useful?

why not just catch KeyError and set the default value?

You could definitely do that, but I think that this is a common enough case and catching an exception an "ugly" enough solution that it's worthwhile. .get() exists on a dictionary for this reason, even though you can catch the KeyError from using dict[].

Thanks for the contribution!

Note that this was merged into 2.0, so you will need to pull a 2.x release to get this feature. (We are cutting the first 2.x release today)