appending key-value pairs to a dict

[Peter Hansen]

rbt wrote:
> I know how to setup an empty list and loop thru something... appending 
> to the list on each loop... how does this work with dicts?
> 
> I'm looping thru a list of files and I want to put the file's name and 
> its sha hash into a dict on each loop.

Whereas with a list you would call "append" in the loop, with a 
dictionary you simply use an indexed-assignment type of access:

mydict = {}
for filename in some_list_of_filenames:
     hash = sha.sha(open(filename).read()).hexdigest() # or whatever
     mydict[filename] = hash

-Peter