Question

I want to have this mydict = {upperkey:{key:value,...},...} and keys[key1, key2, key3...]. In the beginning I created :

mydict = {}

Then:

if upperkey not in mydict:
    mydict[upperkey]= dict([(keys[index+1], value)])
else:
    mydict[upperkey][keys[index+1]]= value

This way works fine but I find it kind of redundant and using mydict[upperkey]= dict([(keys[index+1], value)]) just not very elegant. However, mydict[upperkey][keys[index+1]] = value doesn’t work unless a dictionary already exists within mydict.

Anyone has a better way to do that?

Answer 1

Use setdefault:

mydict.setdefault(upperkey, {})[index+1] = value