Re: annoying dictionary problem, non-existing keys

[Robert Bossy]

bvidinli wrote:

i use dictionaries to hold some config data,
such as:

conf={'key1':'value1','key2':'value2'}
and so on...

when i try to process conf, i have to code every time like:
if conf.has_key('key1'):
if conf['key1']<>'':
other commands....
this is very annoying.
in php, i was able to code only like:
if conf['key1']=='someth'

in python, this fails, because, if key1 does not exists, it raises an exception.

MY question:
is there a way to directly get value of an array/tuple/dict item by key,
as in php above, even if key may not exist, i should not check if key exist,
i should only use it, if it does not exist, it may return only empty,
just as in php....

i hope you understand my question...

If I understand correctly you want default values for non-existing keys.
There are two ways for achieving this:

Way 1: use the get() method of the dict object:
conf.get(key, default)

which is the same as:
conf[key] if key in conf else default
Way 2: make conf a defaultdict instead of a dict, the documentation is
there:
http://docs.python.org/lib/defaultdict-objects.html

Hope this helps,
RB