Python dictionary key error when assigning – how do I get around this?

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KeyError occurs because you are trying to read a non-existant key when you try to access myDict[2000]. As an alternative, you could use defaultdict:

>>> from collections import defaultdict
>>> myDict = defaultdict(dict)
>>> myDict[2000]['hello'] = 50
>>> myDict[2000]
{'hello': 50}

defaultdict(dict) means that if myDict encounters an unknown key, it will return a default value, in this case whatever is returned by dict() which is an empty dictionary.

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