Py_merge_dictionary

As anyone who comes from Perl can tell you hash slicing is useful.  Python
dicts do not natively support slicing.  One of the issues is slicing in Python
seems limited to defined ranges, rather than an ad-hoc collection of values. 

Take heart! There is an expression that has the same effect in Python as
Perl's hash slicing:

    from operator import itemgetter

    d = dict(a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4)
    h, i, j, k = itemgetter('a', 'c', 'a', 'd')(d)
    # h, i, j, k => 1, 3, 1, 4

Alternate solutions are usually more complicated expressions. 
    d = dict(a=1, b=2, c=3, d=4)

    # conceptually more complicated expressions
    h, i, j, k = (d[i] for i in ('a', 'c', 'a', 'd'))
    h, i, j, k = map(d.get, ('a', 'c', 'a', 'd'))


itemgetter provides a more simple expression for extracting multiple ad-hoc
values from a dictionary.