newbie: copying dictionaries

[Erik Max Francis]

"Jon J. Morin" wrote:

> Hi.  I'm a newbie to python and have a question about copying
> dictionary
> objects.  I'm working out of Learning Python by Mark Lutz & David
> Ascher
> (O'Reilly).  The following bit of code was an exercise in the book and
> it
> works, but what I'm asking is why?  I see where the dictionary keys
> get
> copied from one object to the other, but how do the values get copied
> over
> as well?

With the assignment statement:

	newDict[key] = aDict[key]

This assigns the key in the new dictionary to the value of the old.

Note you could shorten the function using the .update method:

	def copyDict(aDict):
	    newDict = {}
	    newDict.update(aDict)
	    return newDict

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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