Safely Checking for Key Existence in a Dictionary

In this lesson, we will explore the get() method used to check for the existence of keys in a dictionary.

The get() function accepts two parameters.

The first parameter is the key you want to search for, and the second parameter is the default value to return if the key does not exist.

Parameter: A variable that handles the values passed to a function.

Copy
my_dict = {'name': 'CodeBuddies', 'age': 30}
country = my_dict.get('country', 'Not Found')

# Since the 'country' key is absent, it returns the default value 'Not Found'
print(country)

If you do not provide a default value as the second argument, it will return None when the key you are searching for does not exist.

Copy
my_dict = {'name': 'CodeBuddies', 'age': 30}
country = my_dict.get('country')

# Since the 'country' key is absent, it returns the default value 'None'
print(country)

In the code above, we used the get function to search for the country key.

However, since the country key does not exist in the dictionary, the get method returns its default value of None.