title: Assigning to a Temporary Dictionary Then Final Dictionary - Advantage?
body: <p>I'm analyzing the update function in the Issue class here: <a href="https://github.com/pycontribs/jira/blob/master/jira/resources.py" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/pycontribs/jira/blob/master/jira/resources.py</a></p>
  
  <p>What I don't understand about the below code is the advantage of assigning twice when the developer could have simply said <code>data['fields] = fields</code> and in the else <code>data['fields'] = {}</code></p>
  
  <p>Are there any known advantages to the below?</p>
  
  <pre class="lang-py prettyprint-override"><code>if fields is not None:
     fields_dict = fields
  else:
     fields_dict = {}
  data['fields'] = fields_dict
  
  if update is not None:
     update_dict = update
  else:
     update_dict = {}
  data['update'] = update_dict
  </code></pre>