How to create dictionary from map class?

Question

I'm trying to introduce escape characters in a dictionary my_dict filled with strings (including symbols in both the keys and values).

I know I can do this by using:

import re
map(re.escape, my_dict))

But how do I reconstitute the dictionary?

Doing this:

dict(map(re.escape, my_dict)

Gives the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: dictionary update sequence element #0 has length 7; 2 is required

Is there a proper way to get the map() class back into a dictionary?

Answer 1

I think the issue is with map(re.escape, my_dict)), you're adding escape characters only to the keys.

Example:

my_dict = {'hoho.ho':'merry.christmas'}
for i in map(re.escape, my_dict):
    print(i)

Output:

hoho\.ho

You need to zip this with the values to create a dictionary. Try this:

new_dict = dict(zip(map(re.escape, my_dict), map(re.escape, my_dict.values())))

Output:

>>> print(new_dict)
{'hoho\\.ho': 'merry\\.christmas'}