[masklinn]

> I'm not familiar with python - does it have some magic global sentinel value to indicate "not found"?

No, it has a different method for failable search. The purpose of `get` is specifically to handle "provide a default value in case the key is not found".

> Or how do you handle that case with that 1 line of code?

dict[key]

[xiongchiamiov]

You can also use defaultdict[0], or define the __missing__() method[1] yourself on a dictionary you receive from someone else's code. In either of these cases the "not found" value will be whatever you decide it should be.

[0]: http://docs.python.org/library/collections.html#collections.... [1]: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#dict