Friday, September 27, 2013

Update method in Python dictionary

I was trying to update values in my dictionary, I came across 2 ways to do so:

product.update(map(key, value))product.update(key, value)

What is the difference between them?

The difference is that the second method does not work:

>>> {}.update(1, 2)Traceback (most recent call last):  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>TypeError: update expected at most 1 arguments, received 2

dict.update() expects to find a iterable of key-value pairs, keyword arguments, or another dictionary:

Update the dictionary with the key/value pairs from other, overwriting existing keys. Return None.

update() accepts either another dictionary object or an iterable of key/value pairs (as tuples or other iterables of length two). If keyword arguments are specified, the dictionary is then updated with those key/value pairs: d.update(red=1, blue=2).

map() is a built-in method that produces a sequence by applying the elements of the second (and subsequent) arguments to the first argument, which must be a callable. Unless your key object is a callable & the value object is a sequence, your first method will fail too.

Demo of a working map() application:

>>> def key(v):...     return (v, v)... >>> value = range(3)>>> map(key, value)[(0, 0), (1, 1), (2, 2)]>>> product = {}>>> product.update(map(key, value))>>> product{0: 0, 1: 1, 2: 2}

Here map() just produces key-value pairs, which satisfies the dict.update() expectations.

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