face_recognition.load_image_file("{}"), what does it mean?

Question

I'm newbie in python. Now I'm working with python related project. I saw following code while I am searching in google related to project.

image = face_recognition.load_image_file("{}")

What does "{}" do inside load_image_file() function? Also, When and where should I use it?

Answer 1

It's hard to answer, without knowing more of how this method load_image_file works. But here are 2 educated guesses which might be accurate:

1. {} would be an empty dictionary. Dictionaries are very important and useful in Python and work with key:value pairs. For instance, the following would be a more useful dictionary than the empty one given:

   • phone_nums = {'home': '867-5309', 'work': '555-1212'} would create a dictionary that has 2 keys ('home' and 'work'), which are associated with the 2 phone numbers. For instance, phone_nums['home'] would yield 867-5309.

2. "{}" would be a JSON representation of an empty "Python dictionary". I put Python dictionary in quotes because a key aspect of the JSON representation is that it can "talk" across different languages. You can write an object to a JSON structure in Python, then open it up in Javascript, or many other languages. (I mention Javascript because that is where JSON originally comes from.)

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But back to your question of what it's doing in that method. If I were to guess, I'd say that the method:

• Looks for a string that is in a JSON representation.
• Looks for some relevant key name in that representation, such as something like 'filename': 'C:\\Users\\my_file.jpeg'.
  • If it cannot find the 'filename' keyword, then it uses a default path.
    • In this case, that's what's happening, and what the author of that snippet of code wanted. However, s/he couldn't simply pass null or an empty string, if indeed there was some requirement of a JSON representation of an object/dictionary. That's all entirely conjecture, though.