assisging multiple values to a element in dictionary

[John Machin]

On May 7, 10:59 pm, Carsten Haese <cars... at uniqsys.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-05-07 at 04:03 -0700, saif.shak... at gmail.com wrote:
> > Hi,
> >        I have a dictionary which is something like this:
> > id_lookup={
> > 16:'subfunction',
> > 26:'dataId',
> > 34:'parameterId',
> > 39:'subfunction',
> > 44:'dataPackageId',
> > 45:'parameterId',
> > 54:'subfunction',
> > 59:'dataId',
> > 165:'subfunction',
> > 169:'subfunction',
> > 170:'dataPackageId',
> > 174:'controlParameterId'
> > }
> >      How do i assign multiple values to the key here.Like i want the
> > key 170 to take either the name 'dataPackageID' or the name
> > 'LocalId'.I use this in my code,and hence if either comes it should
> > work .
>
> That sounds to me like you're translating names to numbers. If that is
> true, you're much better off turning your dictionary around, making the
> name the key and the corresponding number the value. That way you'll
> have two keys pointing to the same value, which is perfectly legal,
> whereas having one key pointing to two values is not really possible.
> You could have one key pointing to a list or tuple of two values, but
> it's not obvious whether that would solve your problem.
>
> Hope this helps,

Unlikely. "Turning it around" produces one key ('subfunction') with
*FIVE* different values.