Dictionary

Python Dictionary

Each key is separated from its value by a colon (:), the items are separated by commas, and the whole thing is enclosed in curly braces. An empty dictionary without any items is written with just two curly braces, like this: {}.

Keys are unique within a dictionary while values may not be. The values of a dictionary can be of any type, but the keys must be of an immutable data type such as strings, numbers, or tuples.

 

Get Values in Dictionary:

To access dictionary elements, you can use the familiar square brackets along with the key to obtain its value. Following is a simple example:

When the above code is executed, it produces the following result −

If we attempt to access a data item with a key, which is not part of the dictionary, we get an error as follows

When the above code is executed, it produces the following result:

Updating Dictionary

You can update a dictionary by adding a new entry or a key-value pair, modifying an existing entry, or deleting an existing entry as shown below in the simple example −

When the above code is executed, it produces the following result −

Delete Dictionary Elements

You can either remove individual dictionary elements or clear the entire contents of a dictionary. You can also delete entire dictionary in a single operation.

To explicitly remove an entire dictionary, just use the del statement. Following is a simple example −

This produces the following result. Note that an exception is raised because after del dict dictionary does not exist any more −

Note: del() method is discussed in subsequent section.

Properties of Dictionary Keys

Dictionary values have no restrictions. They can be any arbitrary Python object, either standard objects or user-defined objects. However, same is not true for the keys.

There are two important points to remember about dictionary keys −

(a) More than one entry per key not allowed. Which means no duplicate key is allowed. When duplicate keys encountered during assignment, the last assignment wins. For example −

When the above code is executed, it produces the following result −

(b) Keys must be immutable. Which means you can use strings, numbers or tuples as dictionary keys but something like [‘key’] is not allowed. Following is a example:

When the above code is executed, it produces the following result −

Built-in Dictionary Functions & Methods −

Python includes the following dictionary functions −

SN Function with Description
1 cmp(dict1, dict2)

Compares elements of both dict.

2 len(dict)

Gives the total length of the dictionary. This would be equal to the number of items in the dictionary.

3 str(dict)

Produces a printable string representation of a dictionary

4 type(variable)

Returns the type of the passed variable. If passed variable is dictionary, then it would return a dictionary type.

Python includes following dictionary methods −

SN Methods with Description
1 dict.clear()

Removes all elements of dictionary dict

2 dict.copy()

Returns a shallow copy of dictionary dict

3 dict.fromkeys()

Create a new dictionary with keys from seq and values set to value.

4 dict.get(key, default=None)

For key key, returns value or default if key not in dictionary

5 dict.has_key(key)

Returns true if key in dictionary dict, false otherwise

6 dict.items()

Returns a list of dict‘s (key, value) tuple pairs

7 dict.keys()

Returns list of dictionary dict’s keys

8 dict.setdefault(key, default=None)

Similar to get(), but will set dict[key]=default if key is not already in dict

9 dict.update(dict2)

Adds dictionary dict2‘s key-values pairs to dict

10 dict.values()

Returns list of dictionary dict‘s values