Let's go back to our program that computes an analytical solution to a boundary value problem. Certain parameters are required to carry out the calculation. So far, we just stored the parameter as a collection of numbers. In a more complex program, this simplistic approach could introduce subtle bugs if we accidentally used one of the parameter variables for something else.
# Define parameters
k = 0.1
l = 1.0
v1 = 0.0
v2 = 1.0
t = 1.0
num_x_steps = 10
# Store parameters in a dictionary
parameters = { 'diffusion coefficient' : k,
'length' : l,
'left_BC' : v1,
'right_BC' :v2,
'time' : t,
'num_x_steps' : num_x_steps
}
# Access the dictionary
print("Value of time is {0}".format(parameters['time']))
parameters['time'] = 2.0
print("New value of time is {0}".format(parameters['time']))
print('')
print("Dictionary contains {0} items:".format(len(parameters)))
for key, value in parameters.iteritems():
print('{0} : {1}...