A common debate among Python developers seems to stem from the retrieval of dictionary values, which can be accomplished using either dict[key]
or dict.get(key)
.
Although you can achieve the same result using either one, dict.get()
is usually preferred, as it accepts a second argument which acts as the default value shall the key not exist in the given dictionary. Due to this property, dict.get()
will always return a value, whereas dict[key]
will raise a KeyError
if the given key is missing.
a = { 'max': 200 }
b = { 'min': 100, 'max': 250 }
c = { 'min': 50 }
a['min'] + b['min'] + c['min'] # throws KeyError
a.get('min', 0) + b.get('min', 0) + c.get('min', 0) # 150
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