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Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Dictionaries String Formatting with Dictionaries

Posted by Bijay Gurung
Bijay Gurung
1,818 Points

Dictionary Unpacking

def func(dict): return "My name is {}. I love {}".format(**dict)

How can I call this function??

1 Answer

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,716 Points
Jeff Muday
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,716 Points

The way you are looking at this with the **dict tells me you already know something about programming! In Python, we typically use *args and **kwargs to make it clear about how we are intending to use the parameters (*args, denotes a variable number of arguments, which are appended to a list, and **kwargs for keyword/value pairs sent in as arguments.)

But the challenge is not quite as fancy, using named parameters in the FORMAT statement, so we must explicitly send name and food in the return statement. Another part of the challenge is realizing the dictionary type DOES NOT guarantee the named arguments are going to come in with a particular order, so... as you might expect,

What the challenge is looking for is this: 

def favorite_food(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(name=dict['name'], food=dict['food'])

A slightly 'safer' method to access a key/value pair

def favorite_food(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(name=dict.get('name'), food=dict.get('food'))