This post introduces how to create a hash table in python.
Text files can have duplicates which will overwrite existing keys in your dictionary (the python name for a hash table). We can create a unique set of the keys, and then use a dictionary comprehension to populate the dictionary.
sample_file.txt:
a
b
c
c
Python code:
with open("sample_file.txt") as f: keys = set(line.strip() for line in f.readlines()) my_dict = {key: 1 for key in keys if key} >>> my_dict {'a': 1, 'b': 1, 'c': 1}