string to dictionary

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 01-Mar-2002 les ander wrote:
> Hi, 
> i have a list of strings like this:
> 
> aList=[ 'a_1 b_1', 'a_2 b_2', 'a_3 b_3',...]
> 
> i want to convert this to a dictionary with a_i -> b_i without
> using loops (it is trivial to do it with loops)
> i tried this 
> 
> dict={}
> map(lambda x,d=dict: c=string.split(x), d[c[0]]=c[1], aList)
> 
> but it complains that "keyword can't be an expression"
> can someone please help me get this right?

not sure if there is a better way to do this, I just wanted to make what you
had work.  Use of '=' is not allowed in lambdas.

d.setdefault(*string.split(x)) works for me here.  Yes it is quite ugly.  The
*foo syntax causes the tuple that split returns to be flattened into an
argument list.  This also may not work on 1.5, do not have a copy here to test.