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I like the Python list comprehension syntax.
Can it be used to create dictionaries too? For example, by iterating over pairs of keys and values:
mydict = {(k,v) for (k,v) in blah blah blah} # doesn't work
Answer #1:
Use a dict comprehension:
{key: value for (key, value) in iterable}
Note: this is for Python 3.x (and 2.7 upwards). Formerly in Python 2.6 and earlier, the dict
built-in could receive an iterable of key/value pairs, so you can pass it a list comprehension or generator expression. For example:
dict((key, func(key)) for key in keys)
In simple cases you don’t need a comprehension at all…
But if you already have iterable(s) of keys and/or values, just call the dict
built-in directly:
1) consumed from any iterable yielding pairs of keys/vals
dict(pairs)
2) "zip'ped" from two separate iterables of keys/vals
dict(zip(list_of_keys, list_of_values))
Answer #2:
In Python 3 and Python 2.7+, dictionary comprehensions look like the below:
d = {k:v for k, v in iterable}
For Python 2.6 or earlier, see fortran’s answer.
Answer #3:
In fact, you don’t even need to iterate over the iterable if it already comprehends some kind of mapping, the dict constructor doing it graciously for you:
>>> ts = [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)]
>>> dict(ts)
{1: 2, 3: 4, 5: 6}
>>> gen = ((i, i+1) for i in range(1, 6, 2))
>>> gen
<generator object <genexpr> at 0xb7201c5c>
>>> dict(gen)
{1: 2, 3: 4, 5: 6}
Answer #4:
In Python 2.7, it goes like:
>>> list1, list2 = ['a', 'b', 'c'], [1,2,3]
>>> dict( zip( list1, list2))
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2}
Zip them!
Answer #5:
Create a dictionary with list comprehension in Python
I like the Python list comprehension syntax.
Can it be used to create dictionaries too? For example, by iterating
over pairs of keys and values:
mydict = {(k,v) for (k,v) in blah blah blah}
You’re looking for the phrase “dict comprehension” – it’s actually:
mydict = {k: v for k, v in iterable}
Assuming blah blah blah
is an iterable of two-tuples – you’re so close. Let’s create some “blahs” like that:
blahs = [('blah0', 'blah'), ('blah1', 'blah'), ('blah2', 'blah'), ('blah3', 'blah')]
Dict comprehension syntax:
Now the syntax here is the mapping part. What makes this a dict
comprehension instead of a set
comprehension (which is what your pseudo-code approximates) is the colon, :
like below:
mydict = {k: v for k, v in blahs}
And we see that it worked, and should retain insertion order as-of Python 3.7:
>>> mydict
{'blah0': 'blah', 'blah1': 'blah', 'blah2': 'blah', 'blah3': 'blah'}
In Python 2 and up to 3.6, order was not guaranteed:
>>> mydict
{'blah0': 'blah', 'blah1': 'blah', 'blah3': 'blah', 'blah2': 'blah'}
Adding a Filter:
All comprehensions feature a mapping component and a filtering component that you can provide with arbitrary expressions.
So you can add a filter part to the end:
>>> mydict = {k: v for k, v in blahs if not int(k[-1]) % 2}
>>> mydict
{'blah0': 'blah', 'blah2': 'blah'}
Here we are just testing for if the last character is divisible by 2 to filter out data before mapping the keys and values.
Answer #6:
Python version >= 2.7, do the below:
d = {i: True for i in [1,2,3]}
Python version < 2.7(RIP, 3 July 2010 – 31 December 2019), do the below:
d = dict((i,True) for i in [1,2,3])
Answer #7:
To add onto @fortran’s answer, if you want to iterate over a list of keys key_list
as well as a list of values value_list
:
d = dict((key, value) for (key, value) in zip(key_list, value_list))
or
d = {(key, value) for (key, value) in zip(key_list, value_list)}
Answer #8:
Here is another example of dictionary creation using dict comprehension:
What i am tring to do here is to create a alphabet dictionary where each pair; is the english letter and its corresponding position in english alphabet
>>> import string
>>> dict1 = {value: (int(key) + 1) for key, value in
enumerate(list(string.ascii_lowercase))}
>>> dict1
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'e': 5, 'd': 4, 'g': 7, 'f': 6, 'i': 9, 'h': 8,
'k': 11, 'j': 10, 'm': 13, 'l': 12, 'o': 15, 'n': 14, 'q': 17, 'p': 16, 's':
19, 'r': 18, 'u': 21, 't': 20, 'w': 23, 'v': 22, 'y': 25, 'x': 24, 'z': 26}
>>>
Notice the use of enumerate here to get a list of alphabets and their indexes in the list and swapping the alphabets and indices to generate the key value pair for dictionary
Hope it gives a good idea of dictionary comp to you and encourages you to use it more often to make your code compact