How to convert Text file contents into a dictionary.

[wavic]

Except it returns a list:

In [1]: list(range(5)) Out[1]: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]

[zivoni]

Except it returns a list:

In [1]: list(range(5)) Out[1]: [0, 1, 2, 3, 4]

Isnt it exactly what i posted?

list() used on iterable returns list containing items from that iterable,..
...
if it always returned list containing its argument, using list(range(5)) would give you list containing range generator instead of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4].

I tried to write second sentence as some sort of "unreal conditional", but my english is pretty weak...

[nilamo]

>>> line = "key:value" >>> dict(list(line.split(":"))) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length 3; 2 is required >>> dict([line.split(":")]) {'key': 'value'} >>> list(line.split(":")) ['key', 'value'] >>> [line.split(":")] [['key', 'value']]

dict() expects a list of key-value pairs. If you use list(), you'll just have a list of strings, and not a list of key-value pairs.