A Python dictionary is a fast, versatile way to store and retrieve data by way of a name or even a more complex object type, rather than just an index ... value, which can be any Python object ...

When using lists in Python, you store a series of values each with a numbered index. For example, this is how you would create a list of fruits in Python: This is not an array, however.

The traditional ways to do this in Python aren’t elegant. One is to write an if/elif/else chain of expressions. The other is to store values to match as keys in a dictionary, then use the values ...