(I'm new to Python!)
Trying to figure out this homework question:
The function will takes as input two dictionaries, each mapping strings to integers. The function will return a dictionary that maps strings from the two input dictionaries to the sum of the integers in the two input dictionaries.
my idea was this:
def add(dicA,dicB):
dicA = {}
dicB = {}
newdictionary = dicA.update(dicB)
however, that brings back None.
In the professor's example:
print(add({'alice':10, 'Bob':3, 'Carlie':1}, {'alice':5, 'Bob':100, 'Carlie':1}))
the output is:
{'alice':15, 'Bob':103, 'Carlie':2}
My issue really is that I don't understand how to add up the values from each dictionaries. I know that the '+' is not supported with dictionaries. I'm not looking for anyone to do my homework for me, but any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
From the documentation:
update([other])
Update the dictionary with the key/value pairs from other, overwriting existing keys. Return None.
You don't want to replace key/value pairs, you want to add the values for similar keys. Go through each dictionary and add each value to the relevant key:
def add(dicA,dicB):
result = {}
for d in dicA, dicB:
for key in d:
result[key] = result.get(key, 0) + d[key]
return result
result.get(key, 0) will retrieve the value of an existing key or produce 0 if key is not yet present.
First of all, a.update(b) updates a in place, and returns None.
Secondly, a.update(b) wouldn't help you to sum the keys; it would just produce a dictionary with the resulting dictionary having all the key, value pairs from b:
>>> a = {'alice':10, 'Bob':3, 'Carlie':1}
>>> b = {'alice':5, 'Bob':100, 'Carlie':1}
>>> a.update(b)
>>> a
{'alice': 5, 'Carlie': 1, 'Bob': 100}
It'd be easiest to use collections.Counter to achieve the desired result. As a plus, it does support addition with +:
from collections import Counter
def add(dicA, dicB):
return dict(Counter(dicA) + Counter(dicB))
This produces the intended result:
>>> print(add({'alice':10, 'Bob':3, 'Carlie':1}, {'alice':5, 'Bob':100, 'Carlie':1}))
{'alice': 15, 'Carlie': 2, 'Bob': 103}
The following is not meant to be the most elegant solution, but to get a feeling on how to deal with dicts.
dictA = {'Alice':10, 'Bob':3, 'Carlie':1}
dictB = {'Alice':5, 'Bob':100, 'Carlie':1}
# how to iterate through a dictionary
for k,v in dictA.iteritems():
print k,v
# make a new dict to keep tally
newdict={}
for d in [dictA,dictB]: # go through a list that has your dictionaries
print d
for k,v in d.iteritems(): # go through each dictionary item
if not k in newdict.keys():
newdict[k]=v
else:
newdict[k]+=v
print newdict
Output:
Bob 3
Alice 10
Carlie 1
{'Bob': 3, 'Alice': 10, 'Carlie': 1}
{'Bob': 100, 'Alice': 5, 'Carlie': 1}
{'Bob': 103, 'Alice': 15, 'Carlie': 2}
def add(dicA,dicB):
You define a function that takes two arguments, dicA and dicB.
dicA = {}
dicB = {}
Then you assign an empty dictionary to both those variables, overwriting the dictionaries you passed to the function.
newdictionary = dicA.update(dicB)
Then you update dicA with the values from dicB, and assign the result to newdictionary. dict.update always returns None though.
And finally, you don’t return anything from the function, so it does not give you any results.
In order to combine those dictionaries, you actually need to use the values that were passed to it. Since dict.update mutates the dictionary it is called on, this would change one of those passed dictionaries, which we generally do not want to do. So instead, we use an empty dictionary, and then copy the values from both dictionaries into it:
def add (dicA, dicB):
newDictionary = {}
newDictionary.update(dicA)
newDictionary.update(dicB)
return newDictionary
If you want the values to sum up automatically, then use a Counter instead of a normal dictionary:
from collections import Counter
def add (dicA, dicB):
newDictionary = Counter()
newDictionary.update(dicA)
newDictionary.update(dicB)
return newDictionary
I suspect your professor wants to achieve this using more simple methods. But you can achieve this very easily using collections.Counter.
from collections import Counter
def add(a, b):
return dict(Counter(a) + Counter(b))
Your professor probably wants something like this:
def add(a, b):
new_dict = copy of a
for each key/value pair in b
if key in new_dict
add value to value already present in new_dict
else
insert key/value pair into new_dict
return new_dict
You can try this:
def add(dict1, dict2):
return dict([(key,dict1[key]+dict2[key]) for key in dict1.keys()])
I personally like using a dictionary's get method for this kind of merge:
def add(a, b):
result = {}
for dictionary in (a, b):
for key, value in dictionary.items():
result[key] = result.get(key, 0) + value
return result
Related
How can I get a random pair from a dict? I'm making a game where you need to guess a capital of a country and I need questions to appear randomly.
The dict looks like {'VENEZUELA':'CARACAS'}
How can I do this?
One way would be:
import random
d = {'VENEZUELA':'CARACAS', 'CANADA':'OTTAWA'}
random.choice(list(d.values()))
EDIT: The question was changed a couple years after the original post, and now asks for a pair, rather than a single item. The final line should now be:
country, capital = random.choice(list(d.items()))
I wrote this trying to solve the same problem:
https://github.com/robtandy/randomdict
It has O(1) random access to keys, values, and items.
If you don't want to use the random module, you can also try popitem():
>> d = {'a': 1, 'b': 5, 'c': 7}
>>> d.popitem()
('a', 1)
>>> d
{'c': 7, 'b': 5}
>>> d.popitem()
('c', 7)
Since the dict doesn't preserve order, by using popitem you get items in an arbitrary (but not strictly random) order from it.
Also keep in mind that popitem removes the key-value pair from dictionary, as stated in the docs.
popitem() is useful to destructively iterate over a dictionary
>>> import random
>>> d = dict(Venezuela = 1, Spain = 2, USA = 3, Italy = 4)
>>> random.choice(d.keys())
'Venezuela'
>>> random.choice(d.keys())
'USA'
By calling random.choice on the keys of the dictionary (the countries).
Try this:
import random
a = dict(....) # a is some dictionary
random_key = random.sample(a, 1)[0]
This definitely works.
This works in Python 2 and Python 3:
A random key:
random.choice(list(d.keys()))
A random value
random.choice(list(d.values()))
A random key and value
random.choice(list(d.items()))
Since the original post wanted the pair:
import random
d = {'VENEZUELA':'CARACAS', 'CANADA':'TORONTO'}
country, capital = random.choice(list(d.items()))
(python 3 style)
If you don't want to use random.choice() you can try this way:
>>> list(myDictionary)[i]
'VENEZUELA'
>>> myDictionary = {'VENEZUELA':'CARACAS', 'IRAN' : 'TEHRAN'}
>>> import random
>>> i = random.randint(0, len(myDictionary) - 1)
>>> myDictionary[list(myDictionary)[i]]
'TEHRAN'
>>> list(myDictionary)[i]
'IRAN'
When they ask for a random pair here they mean a key and value.
For such a dict where the key:values are country:city,
use random.choice().
Pass the dictionary keys to this function as follows:
import random
keys = list(my_dict)
country = random.choice(keys)
You may wish to track the keys that were already called in a round and when getting a fresh country, loop until the random selection is not in the list of those already "drawn"... as long as the drawn list is shorter than the keys list.
Since this is homework:
Check out random.sample() which will select and return a random element from an list. You can get a list of dictionary keys with dict.keys() and a list of dictionary values with dict.values().
I am assuming that you are making a quiz kind of application. For this kind of application I have written a function which is as follows:
def shuffle(q):
"""
The input of the function will
be the dictionary of the question
and answers. The output will
be a random question with answer
"""
selected_keys = []
i = 0
while i < len(q):
current_selection = random.choice(q.keys())
if current_selection not in selected_keys:
selected_keys.append(current_selection)
i = i+1
print(current_selection+'? '+str(q[current_selection]))
If I will give the input of questions = {'VENEZUELA':'CARACAS', 'CANADA':'TORONTO'} and call the function shuffle(questions) Then the output will be as follows:
VENEZUELA? CARACAS
CANADA? TORONTO
You can extend this further more by shuffling the options also
With modern versions of Python(since 3), the objects returned by methods dict.keys(), dict.values() and dict.items() are view objects*. And hey can be iterated, so using directly random.choice is not possible as now they are not a list or set.
One option is to use list comprehension to do the job with random.choice:
import random
colors = {
'purple': '#7A4198',
'turquoise':'#9ACBC9',
'orange': '#EF5C35',
'blue': '#19457D',
'green': '#5AF9B5',
'red': ' #E04160',
'yellow': '#F9F985'
}
color=random.choice([hex_color for color_value in colors.values()]
print(f'The new color is: {color}')
References:
*Python 3.8: Standard Library Documentation - Built-in types: Dictionary view objects
Python 3.8: Data Structures - List Comprehensions:
I just stumbled across a similar problem and designed the following solution (relevant function is pick_random_item_from_dict; other functions are just for completeness).
import random
def pick_random_key_from_dict(d: dict):
"""Grab a random key from a dictionary."""
keys = list(d.keys())
random_key = random.choice(keys)
return random_key
def pick_random_item_from_dict(d: dict):
"""Grab a random item from a dictionary."""
random_key = pick_random_key_from_dict(d)
random_item = random_key, d[random_key]
return random_item
def pick_random_value_from_dict(d: dict):
"""Grab a random value from a dictionary."""
_, random_value = pick_random_item_from_dict(d)
return random_value
# Usage
d = {...}
random_item = pick_random_item_from_dict(d)
The main difference from previous answers is in the way we handle the dictionary copy with list(d.items()). We can partially circumvent that by only making a copy of d.keys() and using the random key to pick its associated value and create our random item.
Try this (using random.choice from items)
import random
a={ "str" : "sda" , "number" : 123, 55 : "num"}
random.choice(list(a.items()))
# ('str', 'sda')
random.choice(list(a.items()))[1] # getting a value
# 'num'
To select 50 random key values from a dictionary set dict_data:
sample = random.sample(set(dict_data.keys()), 50)
I needed to iterate through ranges of keys in a dict without sorting it each time and found the Sorted Containers library. I discovered that this library enables random access to dictionary items by index which solves this problem intuitively and without iterating through the entire dict each time:
>>> import sortedcontainers
>>> import random
>>> d = sortedcontainers.SortedDict({1: 'a', 2: 'b', 3: 'c'})
>>> random.choice(d.items())
(1, 'a')
>>> random.sample(d.keys(), k=2)
[1, 3]
I found this post by looking for a rather comparable solution. For picking multiple elements out of a dict, this can be used:
idx_picks = np.random.choice(len(d), num_of_picks, replace=False) #(Don't pick the same element twice)
result = dict ()
c_keys = [d.keys()] #not so efficient - unfortunately .keys() returns a non-indexable object because dicts are unordered
for i in idx_picks:
result[c_keys[i]] = d[i]
Here is a little Python code for a dictionary class that can return random keys in O(1) time. (I included MyPy types in this code for readability):
from typing import TypeVar, Generic, Dict, List
import random
K = TypeVar('K')
V = TypeVar('V')
class IndexableDict(Generic[K, V]):
def __init__(self) -> None:
self.keys: List[K] = []
self.vals: List[V] = []
self.dict: Dict[K, int] = {}
def __getitem__(self, key: K) -> V:
return self.vals[self.dict[key]]
def __setitem__(self, key: K, val: V) -> None:
if key in self.dict:
index = self.dict[key]
self.vals[index] = val
else:
self.dict[key] = len(self.keys)
self.keys.append(key)
self.vals.append(val)
def __contains__(self, key: K) -> bool:
return key in self.dict
def __len__(self) -> int:
return len(self.keys)
def random_key(self) -> K:
return self.keys[random.randrange(len(self.keys))]
b = { 'video':0, 'music':23,"picture":12 }
random.choice(tuple(b.items())) ('music', 23)
random.choice(tuple(b.items())) ('music', 23)
random.choice(tuple(b.items())) ('picture', 12)
random.choice(tuple(b.items())) ('video', 0)
I had the following dictionary:
ref_range = range(0,100)
aas = list("ACDEFGHIKLMNPQRSTVWXY*")
new_dict = {}
new_dict = new_dict.fromkeys(ref_range,{k:0 for k in aas})
Then I added a 1 to a specific key
new_dict[30]['G'] += 1
>>>new_dict[30]['G']
1
but
>>>new_dict[31]['G']
1
What is going on here? I only incremented the nested key 30, 'G' by one.
Note: If I generate the dictionary this way:
new_dict = {}
for i in ref_range:
new_dict[i] = {a:0 for a in aas}
Everything behaves fine. I think this is a similar question here, but I wanted to know a bit about why this happening rather than how to solve it.
fromkeys(S, v) sets all of the keys in S to the same value v. Meaning that all of the keys in your dictionary new_dict refer to the same dictionary object, not to their own copies of that dictionary.
To set each to a different dict object you cannot use fromkeys. You need to just set each key to a new dict in a loop.
Besides what you have you could also do
{i: {a: 0 for a in aas} for i in ref_range}
Essentially I want to delete every key in a dictionary if its value doesn't equal the highest value.
Let's say this is the dictionary:
myDict = {"Bob": 1, "Bill": 5, "Barry": 4, "Steve": 5}
I'm able to sort it by value using this:
myDict = sorted(myDict, key=myDict.get, reverse=True)
Now I want to remove any key in the dictionary that doesn't equal the highest value (in this case '5'). To end up with this:
myDict = {"Bill": 5, "Steve": 5}
I've tried using this for loop:
for item, v in myDict:
if v < myDict[0]:
del myDict[v]
But I get this error:
ValueError: too many values to unpack (expected 2)
This is a) my first time posting here, and b) I've only been learning Python for a few months so I'm sorry if I've made any stupid mistakes.
for item, v in myDict just give you keys mydict, and you are collecting that key in item, v that's why,
use myDict.items() or myDict.iteritems().
for item, v in myDict.iteritems():
if v < myDict[0]:
del myDict[v]
To get Highest value of myDict
max(myDict.values())
To delete keys from Dict never change the iterator you are iterating on, it will give you RuntimeError. So copy it in another variable and change previous one as Anand S Kumar suggested.
You should never alter the object you're iterating over, that usually yields unexpected results (internal pointers get shifted and you miss elements in your iteration and such). You best gather the keys you want to delete and then remove the keys in a separate iteration:
keys = [k for k in myDict.keys() if myDict[k] == max(myDict.values())];
for k in keys: del myDict[k];
It might be best to put the max expression in a variable too so it doesn't get evaluated multiple times. Not sure if Python's able to optimize that for you (probably not).
You can use dictionary comprehension to create a new dictionary:
newDict = {k: v for k,v in myDict.items() if v == max(myDict.values())}
The output for newDict:
{'Steve': 5, 'Bill': 5}
I have the following dictionary (short version, real data is much larger):
dict = {'C-STD-B&M-SUM:-1': 0, 'C-STD-B&M-SUM:-10': 4.520475, 'H-NSW-BAC-ART:-9': 0.33784000000000003, 'H-NSW-BAC-ART:0': 0, 'H-NSW-BAC-ENG:-59': 0.020309999999999998, 'H-NSW-BAC-ENG:-6': 0,}
I want to divide it into smaller nested dictionaries, depending on a part of the key name.
Expected output would be:
# fixed closing brackets
dict1 = {'C-STD-B&M-SUM: {'-1': 0, '-10': 4.520475}}
dict2 = {'H-NSW-BAC-ART: {'-9': 0.33784000000000003, '0': 0}}
dict3 = {'H-NSW-BAC-ENG: {'-59': 0.020309999999999998, '-6': 0}}
Logic behind is:
dict1: if the part of the key name is 'C-STD-B&M-SUM', add to dict1.
dict2: if the part of the key name is 'H-NSW-BAC-ART', add to dict2.
dict3: if the part of the key name is 'H-NSW-BAC-ENG', add to dict3.
Partial code so far:
def divide_dictionaries(dict):
c_std_bem_sum = {}
for k, v in dict.items():
if k[0:13] == 'C-STD-B&M-SUM':
c_std_bem_sum = k[14:17], v
What I'm trying to do is to create the nested dictionaries that I need and then I'll create the dictionary and add the nested one to it, but I'm not sure if it's a good way to do it.
When I run the code above, the variable c_std_bem_sum becomes a tuple, with only two values that are changed at each iteration. How can I make it be a dictionary, so I can later create another dictionary, and use this one as the value for one of the keys?
One way to approach it would be to do something like
d = {'C-STD-B&M-SUM:-1': 0, 'C-STD-B&M-SUM:-10': 4.520475, 'H-NSW-BAC-ART:-9': 0.33784000000000003, 'H-NSW-BAC-ART:0': 0, 'H-NSW-BAC-ENG:-59': 0.020309999999999998, 'H-NSW-BAC-ENG:-6': 0,}
def divide_dictionaries(somedict):
out = {}
for k,v in somedict.items():
head, tail = k.split(":")
subdict = out.setdefault(head, {})
subdict[tail] = v
return out
which gives
>>> dnew = divide_dictionaries(d)
>>> import pprint
>>> pprint.pprint(dnew)
{'C-STD-B&M-SUM': {'-1': 0, '-10': 4.520475},
'H-NSW-BAC-ART': {'-9': 0.33784000000000003, '0': 0},
'H-NSW-BAC-ENG': {'-59': 0.020309999999999998, '-6': 0}}
A few notes:
(1) We're using nested dictionaries instead of creating separate named dictionaries, which aren't convenient.
(2) We used setdefault, which is a handy way to say "give me the value in the dictionary, but if there isn't one, add this to the dictionary and return it instead.". Saves an if.
(3) We can use .split(":") instead of hardcoding the width, which isn't very robust -- at least assuming that's the delimiter, anyway!
(4) It's a bad idea to use dict, the name of a builtin type, as a variable name.
That's because you're setting your dictionary and overriding it with a tuple:
>>> a = 1, 2
>>> print a
>>> (1,2)
Now for your example:
>>> def divide_dictionaries(dict):
>>> c_std_bem_sum = {}
>>> for k, v in dict.items():
>>> if k[0:13] == 'C-STD-B&M-SUM':
>>> new_key = k[14:17] # sure you don't want [14:], open ended?
>>> c_std_bem_sum[new_key] = v
Basically, this grabs the rest of the key (or 3 characters, as you have it, the [14:None] or [14:] would get the rest of the string) and then uses that as the new key for the dict.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Inverse dictionary lookup - Python
Is there a built in way to index a dictionary by value in Python.
e.g. something like:
dict = {'fruit':'apple','colour':'blue','meat':'beef'}
print key where dict[key] == 'apple'
or:
dict = {'fruit':['apple', 'banana'], 'colour':'blue'}
print key where 'apple' in dict[key]
or do I have to manually loop it?
You could use a list comprehension:
my_dict = {'fruit':'apple','colour':'blue','meat':'beef'}
print [key for key, value in my_dict.items() if value == 'apple']
The code above is doing almost exactly what said you want:
print key where dict[key] == 'apple'
The list comprehension is going through all the key, value pairs given by your dictionary's items method, and making a new list of all the keys where the value is 'apple'.
As Niklas pointed out, this does not work when your values could potentially be lists. You have to be careful about just using in in this case since 'apple' in 'pineapple' == True. So, sticking with a list comprehension approach requires some type checking. So, you could use a helper function like:
def equals_or_in(target, value):
"""Returns True if the target string equals the value string or,
is in the value (if the value is not a string).
"""
if isinstance(target, str):
return target == value
else:
return target in value
Then, the list comprehension below would work:
my_dict = {'fruit':['apple', 'banana'], 'colour':'blue'}
print [key for key, value in my_dict.items() if equals_or_in('apple', value)]
You'll have to manually loop it, but if you'll need the lookup repeatedly this is a handy trick:
d1 = {'fruit':'apple','colour':'blue','meat':'beef'}
d1_rev = dict((v, k) for k, v in d1.items())
You can then use the reverse dictionary like this:
>>> d1_rev['blue']
'colour'
>>> d1_rev['beef']
'meat'
Your requirements are more complex than you realize:
You need to handle both list values and plain values
You don't actually need to get back a key, but a list of keys
You could solve this in two steps:
normalize the dict so that every value is a list (every plain value becomes a single-element)
build a reverse dictionary
The following functions will solve this:
from collections import defaultdict
def normalize(d):
return { k:(v if isinstance(v, list) else [v]) for k,v in d.items() }
def build_reverse_dict(d):
res = defaultdict(list)
for k,values in normalize(d).items():
for x in values:
res[x].append(k)
return dict(res)
To be used like this:
>>> build_reverse_dict({'fruit':'apple','colour':'blue','meat':'beef'})
{'blue': ['colour'], 'apple': ['fruit'], 'beef': ['meat']}
>>> build_reverse_dict({'fruit':['apple', 'banana'], 'colour':'blue'})
{'blue': ['colour'], 'apple': ['fruit'], 'banana': ['fruit']}
>>> build_reverse_dict({'a':'duplicate', 'b':['duplicate']})
{'duplicate': ['a', 'b']}
So you just build up the reverse dictionary once and then lookup by value and get back a list of keys.