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Chapter 9 of 15All chapters

Chapter 9 of 15

Dictionaries

Keys mapped to values, and how to read them safely.

Reading and writing

A dict maps keys to values: scores = {"ada": 10}. Square brackets read a key and raise KeyError when it is missing, while get returns None or a default you supply.

  • scores.get("nobody") is None, and scores.get("nobody", 0) is 0.
  • The expression "ada" in scores checks for a key without reading the value.

Looping

Looping a dict gives its keys. Use .items() to get key and value together, and .values() when the keys do not matter. Since Python 3.7 the order is the order you inserted.