Dictionaries

Dictionaries are associative arrays (hashes)

  • Provide a mapping between keys and objects.
  • Keys may be any immutable object (strings, tuples, numbers)
  • Unordered (unlike sequences)

Methods

     d.clear()          # Remove all items
     d.copy()           # Makes a copy of the dictionary
     d.has_key(k)       # Tests for existence of a key
     d.items()          # Return a list of (key,value) pairs
     d.keys()           # Return a list of keys
     d.values()         # Return a list of values
     d.update(b)        # Adds all objects in dictionary b to d
     d.get(k [,f])      # Returns d[k] if found. Otherwise, return f.

Example

     d = { 'name': 'Dave', 'uid':104 }
     k = d.keys()               # Returns ['name','uid']
     v = d.values()             # Returns ['Dave',104]
     i = d.items()              # Returns [('name','Dave'),('uid',104)]
<<< O'Reilly OSCON 2000, Introduction to Python, Slide 41
July 17, 2000, beazley@cs.uchicago.edu
>>>