On 2 December 2013 02:25, Byron Ruffin <byron.ruf...@g.austincc.edu> wrote: > > The following program works and does what I want except for one last problem > I need to handle. The program reads a txt file of senators and their > associated states and when I input the last name it gives me their state. > The problem is "Udall". There are two of them. The txt file is read by > line and put into a dictionary with the names split. I need a process to > handle duplicate names. Preferably one that will always work even if the > txt file was changed/updated. I don't want the process to handle the name > "Udall" specifically. For a duplicate name I would like to tell the user > it is not a unique last name and then tell them to enter first name and then > return the state of that senator.
You're currently doing this: > senateInfo = {} > senateInfo[lastName] = state Instead of storing just a state in the dict you could store a list of states e.g.: senateInfo[lastName] = [state] Then when you find a lastName that is already in the dict you can do: senateInfo[lastName].append(state) to append the new state to the existing list of states. You'll need a way to test if a particular lastName is already in the dict e.g.: if lastName in senateInfo: Oscar _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor