MIT Pset8 Problem 1 dict syntax

def loadSubjects(filename):
    """
    Returns a dictionary mapping subject name to (value, work), where the name
    is a string and the value and work are integers. The subject information is
    read from the file named by the string filename. Each line of the file
    contains a string of the form "name,value,work".

    returns: dictionary mapping subject name to (value, work)
    """

    # The following sample code reads lines from the specified file and prints
    # each one.
    inputFile = open(filename)
    subDict = {}
    for line in inputFile:
        lSplit = string.split(string.strip(line),',')
        subDict[lSplit[0]] [VALUE] = (int(lSplit[1]),int(lSplit[2]))
    return subDict

    # TODO: Instead of printing each line, modify the above to parse the name,
    # value, and work of each subject and create a dictionary mapping the name
    # to the (value, work).

def printSubjects(subjects):
    """
    Prints a string containing name, value, and work of each subject in
    the dictionary of subjects and total value and work of all subjects
    """
    totalVal, totalWork = 0,0
    if len(subjects) == 0:
        return 'Empty SubjectList'
    res = 'Course\tValue\tWork\n======\t====\t=====\n'
    subNames = subjects.keys()
    subNames.sort()
    for s in subNames:
        val = subjects[s][VALUE] ## What is this syntax?
        work = subjects[s][WORK] ## What is this syntax?
        res = res + s + '\t' + str(val) + '\t' + str(work) + '\n'
        totalVal += val
        totalWork += work
    res = res + '\nTotal Value:\t' + str(totalVal) +'\n'
    res = res + 'Total Work:\t' + str(totalWork) + '\n'
    print res