["python","syntax","dictionary"]
Is it possible to assign the same value to multiple keys in a dict object at once?

In Python, I need a dictionary object which looks like: {'a': 10, 'b': 20, 'c': 10, 'd': 10, 'e': 20} I've been able to get this successfully by combining the dict.update() and dict.fromkeys() functions like so: myDict = {} myDict.update(dict.fromkeys(['a', 'c', 'd'], 10)) myDict.update(dict.fromkeys(['b', 'e'], 20)) However, because the code is being written for novice users who may need to make add keys/values on occasion, I'd prefer a simple bare-bones (Perl-like) syntax such as: myDict = {} myDict['a', 'c', 'd'] = 10 myDict['b', 'e'] = 20 This, however, gives me: myDict = {('a', 'c', 'd'): 10, ('b', 'e'): 20} Is there a way I can simplify my first example (using dict.update() and dict.fromkeys()) further, and get the dict object I'm looking for? Or, alternatively, if I have a dict with tuples as in my second example, is there an easy way for me to do a lookup such as myDict['c'] or myDict.get('c') and get the value 10?
I would say what you have is very simple, you could slightly improve it to be: my_dict = dict.fromkeys(['a', 'c', 'd'], 10) my_dict.update(dict.fromkeys(['b', 'e'], 20)) If your keys are tuple you could do: >>> my_dict = {('a', 'c', 'd'): 10, ('b', 'e'): 20} >>> next(v for k, v in my_dict.items() if 'c' in k) # use .iteritems() python-2.x 10 This is, of course, will return first encountered value, key for which contains given element.