Python's dictionaries are not very common in other programming languages. At least at first, they don't appear normal. Some super variables like lists, arrays, etc, implicitly have an index tied to each element in them. Python's dictionary has keys, which are like these indexes, but are somewhat different (I'll highlight this in just a second). Partnered with these keys are the actual values or elements of the dictionary. Enough with my terrible explanation, let's go with an example.

Example

myExample = {'someItem': 2, 'otherItem': 20}
print(myExample['otherItem'])

Result: 20

See, it's a little weird isn't it? If you tried to be an overachiever, you might have tried something like print(myExample[1]). Python will bite you for this. Dictionaries aren't exactly based on an index. When I show you how to edit the dictionary, you will start to see that there is no particular order in dictionaries. You could add a key: value and, it will appear in random places.

A big caution here is that you cannot create different values with the same key. Python will just overwrite the value of the duplicate keys. With all of the warnings aside, let's add some more key:values to our myExample dictionary.

Example

myExample = {'someItem': 2, 'otherItem': 20}
myExample['newItem'] = 400
for a in myExample:
    print (a)

Result: newItem otherItem someItem

Isn't that crazy how dictionaries are unordered? Now, you might not think they are unordered because my example returns alphabetical order. Well, try playing around with the key names and see if it follows your alphabetical pattern. It won't. Anyways, adding a key:value is really easy. Simply put the key in the brackets and set it equal to the value. One last important thing about dictionaries.

Example

myExample = {'someItem': 2, 'otherItem': 20,'newItem':400}
for a in myExample:
    print (a, myExample[a])

Result: ('newItem', 400) ('otherItem', 20) ('someItem', 2)

All we did here was to spit out our whole dictionary. In lists when we told Python to print our variable out (in our case, it's a), it would print out the value. However, with dictionaries, it will only print out the key. To get the value, you must use the key in brackets following the dictionary's name. Dictionaries are a little confusing, but they are well worth your patience. They are lightning fast and very useful after you start using them.