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up vote 1 down vote favorite

This feels like a stupid question, but I cannot find an answer anywhere. I am trying to learn python, so I figured I could try to create a little command line control for my lights and locks etc. (I have made my own home automation with Arduino).

To my question: I want the Python equivalent to PHP's:

$array = array('light' => array('on', 'off'), 'lock' => array('lock', 'unlock'));

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

In Python you can use a dictionary for this:

>>> dct = {'light': ['on', 'off'], 'lock': ['lock', 'unlock']}
>>> dct
{'lock': ['lock', 'unlock'], 'light': ['on', 'off']}

Another option is to use the dict() constructor, but this requires the keys to be valid Python identifiers:

>>> dct = dict(light=['on', 'off'], lock=['lock', 'unlock'])
>>> dct
{'lock': ['lock', 'unlock'], 'light': ['on', 'off']}

Note that the above two methods won't preserve the order though, if order matters then you should use collections.OrderedDict:

>>> from collections import OrderedDict
>>> dct = OrderedDict((('light', ['on', 'off']), ('lock',['lock', 'unlock'])))
>>> dct
OrderedDict([('light', ['on', 'off']), ('lock', ['lock', 'unlock'])])
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