Question

I have the following program that assigns dictionary keys to an array ( addr[] ) and values to a corresponding array ( msg[] )

import smtplib  

class item:
    id = 0 # next available Item ID
    def __init__(self,startBid,desc):
        self.id = item.id
        item.id += 1
        self.highBid = startBid
        self.highBidder = None
        self.desc = desc
        self.isopen = True

item1 = item(200.30, "bike with a flat tire")
item2 = item(10.4, "toaster that is very large")
item3 = item(40.50, "computer with 8 gb of ram")

clnts = {'[e-mail]':[item1,item3], '[e-mail]':[item2] }

def even(num):
    if (num % 2 == 0):
        return True
    else:
        return False

def getmsg(clnts):
    index = 0
    j = 0
    msg = []
    addr = []

    for key in clnts:
        addr[j] = key
        for key in values:
            msg[j] += str(key.highbidder()) + key.highbid()
            index += 1
            j += 1

getmsg(clnts)

I’ve tried and tried to fix this but I keep getting an error:

line 39, in getmsg
    addr[j] = key
IndexError: list assignment index out of range

Answer 1

In Python, you cannot assign to an index that does not already exist:

>>> x = []
>>> x[0] = True
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
IndexError: list assignment index out of range

Instead of

addr[j] = key

Try

addr.append(key)

You could do away with j altogether, because you’ll have to do the same with msg.

There are some other problems with your code that are not part of your question; I’m assuming these are just errors in trying to make a boiled-down example for a question.