On Aug 16, 6:35 pm, beginner <zyzhu2... at gmail.com> wrote: > Hi All. > > I'd like to do the following in more succint code: > > if k in b: > a=b[k] > else: > a={} > b[k]=a > > a['A']=1 > > In perl it is just one line: $a=$b->{"A"} ||={}. > > Thanks, > Geoffrey Define b as a default dict: b = defaultdict(dict) b[k]['A'] = l Carl Banks