merging two dictionaries

[Skaperen]

i am looking for a way to merge, combine, or add two dictionaries.  i would expect any key(s) in both would be in the result with the value from a designated dictionary (either the 1st or the 2nd).

i initially expected something like this to work:

d1 = {1:'one',2:'two'}
d2 = {2:'deux',3:'trois'}
d3 = d1 + d2

giving a result the same as:

d3 = {1:'one',2:'deux',3:'trois'}

the closest thing i could find in the documentation was the .update method.  but, .update would modify its self dictionary in place and not return the result, so:

d1 = {1:'one',2:'two'}
d2 = {2:'deux',3:'trois'}
d3 = d1.update(d2)

would not work, requiring code like:

d1 = {1:'one',2:'two'}
d2 = {2:'deux',3:'trois'}
d3 = copy.copy(d1)
d3.update(d2)

but in something like function call arguments this just gets messy.  any good ideas how to merge two dictionaries without creating an extra one in the code?