I used defaultdic to store some variables but the output is blank

[Peter Otten]

claire morandin wrote:

> Thanks Peter, true I did not realize that ercc_contigs is empty, but I am
> not sure how to "populate" the dictionary if I only have one column for
> the value but no key

You could use a "dummy value"

ercc_contigs = {}
for line in open('Faq_ERCC_contigs_name.txt'):
    gene = line.split()[0]
    ercc_contigs[gene] = None

but a better approach is to use a set instead of a dict:

ercc_contigs = set()
for line in open('Faq_ERCC_contigs_name.txt'):
    gene = line.split()[0]
    ercc_contigs.add(gene)