Why dict.get(key) instead of dict[key]?

Question

Today, I came across the dict method get which, given a key in the dictionary, returns the associated value.

For what purpose is this function useful? If I wanted to find a value associated with a key in a dictionary, I can just do dict[key], and it returns the same thing:

dictionary = {"Name": "Harry", "Age": 17}

dictionary["Name"]

dictionary.get("Name")

Answer 1

We use dict.get(key) instead of dict[key] because It allows you to provide a default value if the key is missing:-

dictionary.get("bogus", default_value)

The above code returns default_value (whatever you choose it to be).

Whereas when you use dict[key]:-

dictionary["bogus"]

It would raise a KeyError.

To know more about this you can have a look at the following video tutorial:-