Basically, dictionaries are a bunch of couples of key and value where key is an immutable object. In fact you'll find a more accurate definition in any python book or online tutorial. The thing is that keys are usually used as an easy and quick way the search and index items. You can see dict as a list that can use strings instead of integers to index its values.

phonebook = {
   'ricky' : ('ricky', 'martin', 'male'),
   'britney' : ('britney', 'spears', 'female'),
   'myBestBuddy' : ('barack', 'obama', 'male'),
42 : ('bob', 'bib', 'male'), # you can use 42 as index, like strings integers are not mutable True: ('', '', ''), # meaningless example just to show that any immutable object will fit as index
}

fname, ename, gender = phonebook['myBestBuddy']
fname, ename, gender = phonebook[42]

Keys are unique among the dictionary.

Jean-Michel

khem...@gmail.com wrote:
Hi.
As the subject says, I'm a newbie trying to learn python and now
dictionaries. I can create a dict, understand it and use it for simple
tasks. But the thing is that I don't really get the point on how to
use these in real life programing.

For example I tryed to create a very simple phonebook

code:

d = {'fname': [], 'ename': []}
name1 = 'ricky'
name2 = 'martin'
d['fname'].append(name1)
d['ename'].append(name2)

name1 = 'britney'
name2 = 'spears'
d['fname'].append(name1)
d['ename'].append(name2)


This gives me:
{'ename': ['martin', 'spears'], 'fname': ['ricky', 'britney']}

I wonder if this is a correct usage and thinking about dictioaries in
python.
Everything in my example is based on a serval lists in a dictionary,
and person 1 is == ename[0] & fname[0]
and person 2 is == ename[1] & fname[1], it's based on position and
indexing.

Is this correct if no, how would you do it?
if yes, how can I print the result out in a nice way? I need a for-
loop that prints:
all [0] in all lists
all [0] in all lists and so on.


thanks
/jonas


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