Dictionary in python
Towards Dictionaries
• Lists, tuples, and strings hold elements with only integer indices
45 “Coding” 4.5 7 89
0 1 2 3 4
Integer
Indices
• In essence, each element has an index (or a key) which can only be an
integer, and a value which can be of any type (e.g., in the above
list/tuple, the first element has key 0 and value 45)
• What if we want to store elements with non-integer indices (or keys)?
Dictionaries
• In Python, you can use a dictionary to store elements with keys of any
hashable types (e.g., integers, floats, Booleans, strings, and tuples;
but not lists and dictionaries themselves) and values of any types
45 “Coding” 4.5 7 89
“NUM” 1000 2000 3.4 “XXX”
keys of different types Values of different types
• The above dictionary can be defined in Python as follows:
dic = {"NUM":45, 1000:"coding", 2000:4.5, 3.4:7, "XXX":89}
key value
Each element is a key:value pair, and elements are separated by commas
Dictionaries
• To summarize, dictionaries:
• Can contain any and different types of elements (i.e., hashable keys & values)
• Can contain only unique keys but duplicate values
dic2 = {"a":1, "a":2, "b":2}
Output: {'a': 2, 'b': 2}
print(dic2)
The element “a”:2 will override the element “a”:1
because only ONE element can have key “a”
• Can be indexed but only through keys (i.e., dic2[“a”] will return 1 but dic2[0]
will return an error since there is no element with key 0 in dic2)
Dictionaries
• To summarize, dictionaries:
• CANNOT be concatenated
• Can be nested (e.g., d = {"first":{1:1}, "second":{2:"a"}}
• Can be passed to a function and will result in a pass-by-reference and not
pass-by-value behavior since they are mutable (similar to lists)
def func1(d):
d["first"] = [1, 2, 3]
Output:
dic = {"first":{1:1}, "second": {'first': {1: 1}, 'second': {2: 'a'}}
{2:"a"}} {'first': [1, 2, 3], 'second': {2: 'a'}}
print(dic)
func1(dic)
print(dic)
Dictionaries
• To summarize, dictionaries:
• Can be iterated or looped over
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3}
for i in dic:
print(i)
first ONLY the keys will be returned.
Output: second
third How to get the values?
Dictionaries
• To summarize, dictionaries:
• Can be iterated or looped over
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3}
for i in dic:
print(dic[i])
1
Output: 2 Values can be accessed via indexing!
3
Adding Elements to a Dictionary
• How to add elements to a dictionary?
• By indexing the dictionary via a key and assigning a corresponding value
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3}
print(dic)
dic["fourth"] = 4
print(dic)
{'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3}
Output:
{'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3, 'fourth': 4}
Adding Elements to a Dictionary
• How to add elements to a dictionary?
• By indexing the dictionary via a key and assigning a corresponding value
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3}
print(dic)
dic[”second"] = 4 If the key already exists,
print(dic) the value will be overridden
{'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3}
Output:
{'first': 1, 'second’: 4, 'third': 3}
Deleting Elements to a Dictionary
• How to delete elements in a dictionary?
• By using del
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3} Output:
print(dic)
dic["fourth"] = 4 {'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3}
print(dic) {'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3, 'fourth': 4}
del dic["first"] {'second': 2, 'third': 3, 'fourth': 4}
print(dic)
Deleting Elements to a Dictionary
• How to delete elements in a dictionary?
• Or by using the function pop(key)
dic = {"first": 1, "second": 2, "third": 3} Output:
print(dic)
dic["fourth"] = 4 {'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3}
print(dic) {'first': 1, 'second': 2, 'third': 3, 'fourth': 4}
dic.pop(“first”) {'second': 2, 'third': 3, 'fourth': 4}
print(dic)
Dictionary Functions
• Many other functions can also be used with dictionaries
Function Description
dic.clear() Removes all the elements from dictionary dic
dic.copy() Returns a copy of dictionary dic
dic.items() Returns a list containing a tuple for each key-value pair in
dictionary dic
dic.get(k) Returns the value of the specified key k from dictionary dic
dic.keys() Returns a list containing all the keys of dictionary dic
dic.pop(k) Removes the element with the specified key k from dictionary dic
