As you have found, get just gets the value corresponding to a given key. sorted will iterate through the iterable it's passed. In this case that iterable is a dict, and iterating through a dict just iterates through its keys.

Understanding the Context

If you want to sort based on the values instead, you need to transform the keys to their corresponding values, and of course the obvious way to do this is with get. To ... What your snippet of code is doing is saying, "Get the value of a GET variable with name 'page', and if it doesn't exist, return 1". Likewise, you will see request.POST used when a user submits a form.

Key Insights

3M Followers, 1,051 Following, 13K Posts - World Athletics (@worldathletics) on Instagram: "The home of running, jumping, throwing & walking. Get the inside track on the world’s best athletes & competitions. 🔜 #WorldRelays | May 2-3" Get the official YouTube app on Android phones and tablets. See what the world is watching -- from the hottest music videos to what’s popular in gaming, fashion, beauty, news, learning and more. * Search Facebook on any topic and get more interactive results Connect with people and communities: * Join groups to learn tips from real people who’ve been there, done that * Get inspired by creators, or catch up with Friends * Add new Friends to your world, but also decide how closely to keep up with them Here the get method finds a key entry for 'e' and finds its value which is 1.

Final Thoughts

We add this to the other 1 in characters.get (character, 0) + 1 and get 2 as result. When we apply this in the characters [character] = characters.get (character, 0) + 1 equation: ... It should be clear that the last equation assigns a new value 2 to the already ...