Python: Add new dictionary key that consist of word from previous key

Question

So I build a glossary application using python dictionary. But I found an interesting case which I don't know how to solve it.

For example, I have a dictionary as follows.

glos = {'Hypertext Markup Language': 'the standard markup language for documents.',  
        'HTML': 'the standard markup language for documents.',  
        'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language': 'HTML that emphasizes the meaning of the encoded information.'}

As you can see, the Hypertext Markup Language has the same value as HTML , but is there any way to add Semantic HTML key with the same value as Semantic Hypertext Markup Language ?

The end product would be like this:

glos = {'Hypertext Markup Language': 'the standard markup language for documents.',  
        'HTML': 'the standard markup language for documents.',  
        'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language': 'HTML that emphasizes the meaning of the encoded information.'
        'Semantic HTML': 'HTML that emphasizes the meaning of the encoded information.'}

I thought of creating new dict for key with its abbreviation like this

same_val = {'Hypertext Markup Language': 'HTML'}

After that, it's gonna loop the key in glos dict to find if it has the word from same_val dict by using some regex or anything, but I don't know how to properly type it in code.

Answer 1

This sounds like a very fragile method. It won't work with variations such as plurals etc. I would suggest against bloating the main glossary but having a separate aliases dictionary and use glos and aliases together when looking up terms. For example:

glos = {'Hypertext Markup Language': 'the standard markup language for documents.', 
        'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language': 'HTML that emphasizes the meaning of the encoded information.'}
aliases = {'HTML': 'Hypertext Markup Language',
           'Semantic HTML': 'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language'}
  
def lookup(term):
    return glos.get(term, glos.get(aliases.get(term)))

Answer 2

You want to insert a new key 'Semantic HTML' into glos with the same value as for the key 'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language' . If my understanding is correct, the code that should accomplish your needs is as follows. Add this after you've created the glos object.

glos['Semantic HTML'] = glos['Semantic Hypertext Markup Language']

What does this do? We get the value corresponding to the key 'Semantic Hypertext Markup Language' from the dictionary, and assign that same value back to the dictionary, under the key 'Semantic HTML' .