capitalize() method inside an if statement, inside a for loop in a dictionary

Question

I have created a for loop that loops through each key and value in the data dictionary items. Inside the for loop, I have created an if statement that checks if the value is not equal to "student". Inside the if statement, I am using the capitalize() method to update the string values for all strings that are not "student" so that their first letter is capitalized:

data = {
    "first_name": "brian",
    "last_name": "johnson",
    "occupation": "student"
}

for key, value in data.items():
    if value != "student":
        value = data[value].capitalize()
print(data)

When I print outside the loop I get KeyError: 'brian' Could anyone kindly tell me where I am going wrong?? Thank you so much!

Answer 1

Using data[x] calls the value from key x, so what you currently have is attempting to use the values as keys. It will work if you change the code to

data = {
    "first_name": "brian",
    "last_name": "johnson",
    "occupation": "student"
}

for key, value in data.items():
    #use **data[key]** to call the **value**
    if data[key] != "student":
        data[key] = data[key].capitalize()
print(data)