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pythondictionaryiterable-unpacking

How to unpack a dictionary of list (of dictionaries!) and return as grouped tuples?


I have a data structure consisting of mixed dictionaries and lists. I am trying to unpack this so as to get tuples of the keys and all sub-values for each key.

I am working with list comprehensions, but just not getting it to work. Where am I going wrong?

I saw many other answers about unpacking a list-of-lists (e.g. 1,2), but could not find an example where a single key unpacks against multiple sub-values.

  • desired output --> [('A',1,2),('B',3,4)]
  • actual output --> [('A',1), ('A',2), ('B',3), ('B',4)]

code:

dict_of_lists = {'A':[{'x':1},{'x':2}], 'B':[{'x':3},{'x':4}] }
print [(key,subdict[subkey],) for key in dict_of_lists.keys() for subdict in dict_of_lists[key] for subkey in subdict.keys()]

Solution

  • When list comprehensions become

    • long
    • unclear/hard to read
    • and most importantly, do not work

    ditch them and go with the manual for loop(s) every time:

    Python 2.x

    def unpack(d):
        for k, v in d.iteritems():
            tmp = []
            for subdict in v:
                for _, val in subdict.iteritems():
                    tmp.append(val)
            yield (k, tmp[0], tmp[1])
    
    
    print list(unpack({'A':[{'x':1},{'x':2}], 'B':[{'x':3},{'x':4}] }))
    

    Python 3.x

    def unpack(d):
            for k, v in d.items():
                tmp = []
                for subdict in v:
                    for _, val in subdict.items():
                        tmp.append(val)
                yield (k, *tmp) # stared expression used to unpack iterables were
                                # not created yet in Python 2.x                
    
    print(list(unpack({'A':[{'x':1},{'x':2}], 'B':[{'x':3},{'x':4}] })))
    

    Output:

    [('A', 1, 2), ('B', 3, 4)]