Where is the syntax for the dict() constructor ?!

[Captain Poutine]

Peter Otten wrote:
> Neil Cerutti wrote:
> 
>> On 2007-07-05, Captain Poutine <captainpoutine at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm simply trying to read a CSV into a dictionary.
>>>
>>> (if it matters, it's ZIP codes and time zones, i.e.,
>>> 35983,CT
>>> 39161,CT
>>> 47240,EST
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Apparently the way to do this is:
>>>
>>> import csv
>>>
>>> dictZipZones = {}
>>>
>>> reader = csv.reader(open("some.csv", "rb"))
>>> for row in reader:
>>>      # Add the row to the dictionary
>> In addition to Chris's answer, the csv module can read and write
>> dictionaries directly. Look up csv.DictReader and csv.DictWriter.
> 
> DictReader gives one dict per row, with field names as keys. The OP is more
> likely to want
> 
> dict(csv.reader(open("some.csv", "rb")))
> 
> which produces a dict that maps ZIP codes to time zones.
> 
> Peter
> 

Thanks Peter, that basically works, even if I don't understand it.

What does "rb" mean? (read binary?)
Why are the keys turned into strings (they are not quoted in the .csv file)?