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8.7) Dictionaries: Indexing


Since dictionary elements are organised by keys rather than positions, you’ll have to use a key as an index.

Let’s consider the following dictionary:

>>> Bilbo={'Name':['Bilbo','Baggins'], 'Race':'Elf', 'Gender':'Male', 'DoB':[22,'September',2890]}

To get the gender of Bilbo, we do:

>>> Bilbo['Gender']
'Male'

Indexing is always done with square brackets.

What will the following return? Try and work it out, and then check in IDLE.

>>> Bilbo['DoB'][2]

Was the answer, 2890?. Can you explain why?

Bilbo['DoB'] is a list with three elements so Bilbo['DoB'][2] will return the third element in the list, which corresponds to Bilbo’s year of birth.

You might have noticed a mistake in Bilbo’s race. Fortunately, dictionaries are mutable like lists, they can be modified. To correct our mistake:

>>> Bilbo['Race']='Hobbit'
>>> print Bilbo['Race']
Hobbit