Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Python Python Collections (2016, retired 2019) Dictionaries String Formatting with Dictionaries

Dictionary Unpacking

def func(dict): return "My name is {}. I love {}".format(**dict)

How can I call this function??

1 Answer

Jeff Muday
MOD
Jeff Muday
Treehouse Moderator 28,720 Points

The way you are looking at this with the **dict tells me you already know something about programming! In Python, we typically use *args and **kwargs to make it clear about how we are intending to use the parameters (*args, denotes a variable number of arguments, which are appended to a list, and **kwargs for keyword/value pairs sent in as arguments.)

But the challenge is not quite as fancy, using named parameters in the FORMAT statement, so we must explicitly send name and food in the return statement. Another part of the challenge is realizing the dictionary type DOES NOT guarantee the named arguments are going to come in with a particular order, so... as you might expect,

What the challenge is looking for is this:

def favorite_food(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(name=dict['name'], food=dict['food'])

A slightly 'safer' method to access a key/value pair

def favorite_food(dict):
    return "Hi, I'm {name} and I love to eat {food}!".format(name=dict.get('name'), food=dict.get('food'))