dictionary = {"Hello": 1234, "World": 5678}
print(dictionary["Hello"])
The above code will print 1234
.
The string "Hello"
in this example is called a key. It is used to lookup a value in the dict
by placing the key in square brackets.
The number 1234
is seen after the respective colon in the dict
definition. This is called the value that "Hello"
maps to in this dict
.
Looking up a value like this with a key that does not exist will raise a KeyError
exception, halting execution if uncaught. If we want to access a value without risking a KeyError
, we can use the dictionary.get
method. By default if the key does not exist, the method will return None
. We can pass it a second value to return instead of None
in the event of a failed lookup.
w = dictionary.get("whatever")
x = dictionary.get("whatever", "nuh-uh")
In this example w
will get the value None
and x
will get the value "nuh-uh"
.