[Tutor] dictionary manipulation

[Kent Johnson]

Chris Hallman wrote:
>
> I need some suggestions on how to work with a dictionary. I've got a 
> program that builds a dictionary. I need to be able to manipulate the 
> different keys and data so that I can write the output to a file AND 
> utilize the smtplib to send the data in an email. I had problems using 
> the data in the dictionary, so I wrote a crude for loop to strip 
> characters:
>
> >>> print result
> {'s0100swa': ['running correct IOS'], 's0300swa': ['INCORRECT running 
> IOS'], 's0200swa': ['running correct IOS'], 's0400swa': ['running 
> correct IOS']}
>
> results= sorted(result.items ())
>
> >>> print results
> [('s0100swa', ['running correct IOS']), ('s0200swa', ['running correct 
> IOS']), ('s0300swa', ['INCORRECT running IOS']), ('s0400swa', 
> ['running correct IOS'])]
>
> for x in range(len(results)):
>     text = repr(results[x])
>     text = text.replace("'", "")
>     text = text.replace("(", "")
>     text = text.replace(")", "")
>     text = text.replace ("[", "")
>     text = text.replace("]", "")
>     text = text.replace(",", ":")
>     output.write(text + "\n")
>     output.flush()
> output.write ("\n")
It seems like most of the work you are doing here is getting rid of 
characters you don't want that you introduced by using the string 
representation of the results list. You will do much better by just 
creating the string you want directly. I think you want something like this:

for key, value in sorted(result.items()):
  value = value[0] # get the firset item from the value list
  line = '%s: %s\n' % (key, value)
  output.write(line)

Also you are using a list as the value in the dict, but all the lists 
contain a single string. Maybe you should just store the string directly?

Kent