MIT Python学习基础系列（二） - dictionary

Dictionaries

Strings, tuples, ranges, lists

Common operations

• seq[i]
• len(seq)
• seq1 + seq2 (not ranges)
• n*seq -> sequence that repeats seq n times ( not ranges )
• seq[start:end]
• 3 in seq
• 3 not in seq
• for e in seq -> iterates over elements of sequence
• Properties

• Only lists are mutable

  Dictionaries

• Index item of interest directly (not always int)
• Use one data structure

• A python dictionary { }

Store pairs of data

Key : Value

my_dict = {} 
grades = {‘John’: ‘A+’, ‘Katy’:’A’}

Operations

• Add an entry:

grades[‘Sylvan’] = ‘B+’

• Remove an entry:

del(grades[‘Ana’])

• Copy a dict:

dict2 = dict(dict1) 
or 
dict2 = dict1.copy()

• Test if a key is in the dictionary:

‘Daniel’ in grades

• Get an iterable that acts like a tuple of all keys:

grades.keys() # [‘Ana’,’Ben’]

• Get an iterable that acts like a tuple of all values:

grades.values()

• Safe way to access a value if we are not sure the key is in the dictionary:

d.get(key, default)

Keys and Values

Values

• Can be any type (immutable or mutable)
• Can be duplicates
• Can be lists, even other dictionaries

Keys

• Must be unique
• Immutable type(int, float, string, tuple, bool)
• Need an object that is hashable, all immutable types are hashable
• Careful with float type as a key
• No order to keys or values

Examples with a Dictionary

• Fibonacci and dictionaries

Recursive fibonacci is ineffective because it keeps recalculating
Store the already-calculated result in a dictionary to save the recalculating