[Tutor] dict() versus {}

[wormwood_3]

When creating a list of dictionaries through a loop, I ran into a strange issue. I'll let the code talk:

>>> l = 'i am a special new list'.split()
>>> t = []
>>> for thing in l:
...     t.append({thing: 1})
... 
>>> t
[{'i': 1}, {'am': 1}, {'a': 1}, {'special': 1}, {'new': 1}, {'list': 1}]

This is what I expected. {} says to make a dictionary. Thing, not being quoted, is clearing a variable, which needs to be evaluated and used as the key.

>>> t = []
>>> for thing in l:
...     t.append(dict(thing=1))
... 
>>> t
[{'thing': 1}, {'thing': 1}, {'thing': 1}, {'thing': 1}, {'thing': 1}, {'thing': 1}]

This was what threw me. Why would the dict() function not evaluate thing? How can it take it as a literal string without quotes?


Thanks for any insight,
Sam

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