Dictionaries

Dictionaries are things that “map” from one thing (called a key) to another (called a value). They are (along with Lists one of the most common data structures you will see when programming. They are best understood by playing with them:

Creating Dictionaries

>>> {}
{}
>>> {
...    'thar': 'thusly',
...    'them': 'tharly',
... }
{'thar': 'thusly', 'them': 'tharly'}
>>> {2:3, 4:None, 5:18}
{2: 3, 4: None, 5: 18}

Adding, Accessing Keys

>>> dictionary = {}
>>> dictionary
{}
>>> dictionary['this'] = 'those'
>>> dictionary['this']
'those'
>>> len(dictionary)
1
>>> dictionary['those'] = 'moo'
>>> len(dictionary)
2
>>> dictionary['those'] = 'zoo'
>>> len(dictionary)
2
>>> dictionary['those']
'zoo'
>>> dictionary['those'] + 'who'
'zoowho'

Deleting Keys

>>> dictionary = {"this": 23}
>>> dictionary
{'this': 23}
>>> del dictionary["this"]
>>> dictionary
{}

Checking for Keys

You can use the phrase x in dictionary to check if a given key is in a dictionary. You can also just try to access the key and get an exception if it’s not there.

>>> dictionary = {'this': 'those'}
>>> 'this' in dictionary
True
>>> 'that' in dictionary
False
>>> dictionary['moo']
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/doctest.py", line 1315, in __run
    compileflags, 1) in test.globs
  File "<doctest default[3]>", line 1, in <module>
    dictionary['moo']
KeyError: 'moo'

Key Matching

• just like a name in a namespace, there’s only one value assigned to a given key in a dictionary

• if you assign a new value to that key, then the old value is “lost”

>>> dictionary = {'a':1}
>>> dictionary
{'a': 1}
>>> dictionary['a'] = 2
>>> dictionary
{'a': 2}

• keys must compare equal and have the same “hash”

>>> dictionary = {1:'hello'}
>>> dictionary
{1: 'hello'}
>>> dictionary[1.0] = "world" # 1 == 1.0
>>> dictionary
{1: 'world'}
>>> dictionary['1'] = "egads" # '1' != 1
>>> dictionary
{1: 'world', '1': 'egads'}

Note

Why was that key still 1 instead of 1.0 when we set the key 1.0 to “world”?

Internally the dictionary is a set of things that look like:

hash: [(key,value),…]

when you assign to an existing key that has the same hash and compares equal the dictionary re-uses the (key,value) record and just assigns the new value to the “value” part of it. It’s an optimization that makes the dictionary object faster.

• iterable, but un-ordered, so don’t depend on the order of items

#! /usr/bin/env python
# dictiteration.py

from __future__ import print_function
dictionary = {'this':'that','those':'thar',23:18,None:5}

print('items',dictionary.items())
print('values',dictionary.values())
print('keys', dictionary.keys())

for key in dictionary:
    print('{!r} : {}'.format( key, dictionary[key] ))

Namespaces

Python’s names are (in the common implementation) actually implemented with dictionaries. You can see this using the eval() function, where you can run code using a dictionary as the namespace in which the code will be evaluated.

>>> dictionary = {'a':1,'b':2}
>>> eval( 'a+b',dictionary)
3