10.7: Using Tuples as Keys in Dictionaries
- Page ID
- 3176
Because tuples are hashable and lists are not, if we want to create a composite key to use in a dictionary we must use a tuple as the key.
We would encounter a composite key if we wanted to create a telephone directory that maps from last-name, first-name pairs to telephone numbers. Assuming that we have defined the variables last
, first
, and number
, we could write a dictionary assignment statement as follows:
directory[last,first] = number
The expression in brackets is a tuple. We could use tuple assignment in a for
loop to traverse this dictionary.
for last, first in directory:
print(first, last, directory[last,first])
This loop traverses the keys in directory
, which are tuples. It assigns the elements of each tuple to last
and first
, then prints the name and corresponding telephone number.