a clean way to define dictionary

[Alex Martelli]

Bryan wrote:
   ...
> dict(zip(lst[0::2], map(eval, lst[1::2])))

Note: 2.3 only -- lists didn't support extended-slicing in Python 2.2.

> also, i don't think it's a good idea to use dict as a variable name since
> dict is a python type.

Very good advice!  If you use dict as a local name, you shadow the
buit-in name 'dict' and therefore cannot any more call it e.g. in
order to generate a new dictionary, as above.


Alex