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Dictionary my best option? - birdieman - Dec-31-2016
I am still a beginner and would like to know the best way to approach my task -- whether to structure my data table as a list or dictionary or something else?
The best way to describe my data table is to picture an Excel table with 50 rows and 47 columns.
Column 1 consists of 50 unique two-letter codes (this would by my "key" in a dictionary). Columns 2 through 48 have variables/numbers (one per column) associated/linked with the unique two-letter code in column 1.
As a beginner, I have used a dictionary to ".get" one variable associated with a unique key.
However, what if I need to .get 47 variables based on the two-letter unique key? Is that possible with a dictionary? Is it easy to grab/identify each variable with some kind of loop or something?
I know this may not be enough information, but it is the best way for me to describe my task
thanks for looking
RE: Dictionary my best option? - metulburr - Dec-31-2016
Quote:As a beginner, I have used a dictionary to ".get" one variable associated with a unique key.yes a for loop.
However, what if I need to .get 47 variables based on the two-letter unique key? Is that possible with a dictionary? Is it easy to grab/identify each variable with some kind of loop or something?
You can also just return a list of keys via MY_DICTIONARY.keys() and a list of values with MY_DICTIONARY.values()
If you need to specify the key and not get all you can just loop them and insert an if condition to get the key/value pairs you want
for k,v in MY_DICTIONARY.items(): #insert if condition here to check key for more filtering #k is the key #v is the value of that keyPost your code for more explicit help
RE: Dictionary my best option? - birdieman - Dec-31-2016
thanks for the reply -- I need to learn a little more about dictionaries. Happy New Year
RE: Dictionary my best option? - wavic - Dec-31-2016
Hello!
You can feed a dictionary key with every type of data, objects. You can have nested structures of data.
Or this:
In [1]: def foo():
...: return 'foo'
...:
In [2]: def bar():
...: return 'bar'
...:
In [3]: d = {'bob': [foo, bar]}
In [4]: d['bob'][0]() == d['bob'][1]()
Out[4]: False
RE: Dictionary my best option? - Skaperen - Dec-31-2016
dictionary keys are limited to hashable objects.
RE: Dictionary my best option? - wavic - Dec-31-2016
I didn't mean the key itself
RE: Dictionary my best option? - Skaperen - Dec-31-2016
yeah, the values can be anything, but quite a lot of stuff can be keys.
RE: Dictionary my best option? - ichabod801 - Dec-31-2016
To be clear to the beginners, dictionary keys can be immutable objects like ints, floats, strings, and tuples. They can't be mutable objects like lists, dictionaries, or sets.
RE: Dictionary my best option? - Skaperen - Jan-01-2017
for fun trivia: i made a little dictionary with keys of many different functions (references).