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| -rw-r--r-- | bot/resources/tags/dict-get.md | 16 |
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diff --git a/bot/resources/tags/dict-get.md b/bot/resources/tags/dict-get.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e02df03ab --- /dev/null +++ b/bot/resources/tags/dict-get.md @@ -0,0 +1,16 @@ +Often while using dictionaries in Python, you may run into `KeyErrors`. This error is raised when you try to access a key that isn't present in your dictionary. Python gives you some neat ways to handle them. + +**The `dict.get` method** + +The [`dict.get`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#dict.get) method will return the value for the key if it exists, and None (or a default value that you specify) if the key doesn't exist. Hence it will _never raise_ a KeyError. +```py +>>> my_dict = {"foo": 1, "bar": 2} +>>> print(my_dict.get("foobar")) +None +``` +Below, 3 is the default value to be returned, because the key doesn't exist- +```py +>>> print(my_dict.get("foobar", 3)) +3 +``` +Some other methods for handling `KeyError`s gracefully are the [`dict.setdefault`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#dict.setdefault) method and [`collections.defaultdict`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/collections.html#collections.defaultdict) (check out the `!defaultdict` tag). |