Python: Comparing dictionary key with string

Question

I'm trying to compare the key in a dictionary with a string in Python but I can't find any way of doing this. Let's say I have:

dict = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2}

And I want to compare the key of the first index in the dictionary (which is "a") with with a string. So something like:

if ´Dictionary key´ == "a":
    return True
else:
    return False

Is there a way of doing this? Appreciate all the help I can get.

Solution

Python dictionnaries have keys and values accessed using those keys.

You can access the keys as follows, your dict key will be stored in the key variable:

my_dict = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2}
for key in my_dict:
    print key

This will print:

a
b

---

You can then do any comparisons you want:

my_dict = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2}
for key in my_dict:
    if key == "a":
        return True
    else:
        return False

which can be improved to:

my_dict = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2}
print "a" in my_dict.keys()

---

You can then access the values for each key in your dict as follows:

my_dict = {"a" : 1, "b" : 2}
for key in my_dict:
    print my_dict[key]

This will print:

1
2

---

I suggest you read more about dictionaries from the official Python documentation: https://docs.python.org/3.6/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries