Create a function that opens a file and creates a dictionary

Question

I have a file that I\'m working with. I want to create a function that reads the files and place the contents into a dictionary. Then that dictionary needs to be passed through

Answer 1

Based on your second comment and your preview code, you are on the right track. Dictionaries in Python are passed by reference, so you should just be able to fill the dictionary provided to init_dictionary and the values will be accessible in main(). In your case you are creating a new dictionary in init_dictionary with the line sunspot_dict = {}. You don't want to do this, because the dictionary you want to use was already created in main().

At this point we would need to know the format of the file you are reading. Basically you need to open the file, then probably read it line by line while parsing the lines into key/value pairs and filling sunspot_dict.