Question

I am defining a function

def update(dictionary,key,value):
    dictionary[key] = value
   #  if i do print dictionary... it still shows the original value?

I want to update the input dictionary in the main call

So this is the main function i wrote:

def update_mapping(mapping_dict,check_word,solution_word):
    #print "here "
    #new_mapping_dict = {}
    for i,ele in enumerate(check_word):
        if mapping_dict.has_key(ele):
            if mapping_dict[ele] == "*":
                mapping_dict[ele] = solution_word[i]

                print ele, solution_word
    print mapping_dict,check_word,solution_word

Basically I am inputting a misspelled word and then misspelled word has some mapping..
I do that mapping in the dictionary..
Like

 mapping_dict ={"a":"x"...."s":"*"...}

So all the known alphabets whose mapping have been found have a legit key value alphabet pairs..
for the alphabets for which I havent found the right mapping, I am replacing them with “*”
and I am finding them with some algorithm (inverted index)

And as i found those, I want to update my dictionary?

Answer 1

>>> test = {"test": 1}
>>> def update(dictionary,key,value):
...     dictionary[key] = value
... 
>>> update(test, "test", 2)
>>> test
{'test': 2}

Your problem must be elsewhere – this works.