Question

suppose d is a dict

d={' a ':1,'b ':2}

if we give like this

d.has_key(' a ')
True

but this is false

d.has_key('a')
False

so i tried like this

d.has_key('\sa\s')
False

so how to find dict keys having spaces without stripping their whitespaces

thanks in advance

Answer 1

You will have to remove them:

d = {' a ':1,'b ':2}
key = 'a'
print any(key == k.strip() for k in d.iterkeys())

prints True

To get the value, you can use this method:

def get_stripped(d, key):
    return next((v for k,v in d.iteritems() if key == k.strip()), None)

print get_stripped(d, 'a') # prints 1
print get_stripped(d, 'c') # prints None

This will return just one arbitrary value if d = {' a ': 1, ' a': 2} and key = 'a'.