dictionary of dictionaries, to be updated

[Skaperen]

i have a dictionary of dictionaries. and i have another one to update the first one with on an individual item-by-item basis. it appears that dictodicts1.update(dictodicts2) is not really going to to this right. i suspect that for a subdictionary that is in both (has the same key in both dictodicts1 and dictodicts2), doing an update like that will replace one whole subdictionary with another whole subdictionary. bet i could be wrong about that. if i am right, does anyone know a good way to update the 1st from the 2nd on an individual item-by-item basis?

[perfringo]

What do you mean by “update”? Do you want add key-value pairs which are not in first dictionary or you want update value in first dictionary if key is in second dictionary?

[Skaperen]

i want to add whatever is not already there and replace whatever is there that the update object has, whether that is in the first level or second. if there is a case of more than one value in different dictionaries at the 2nd level but in the same dictionary at the first level, the result should be a combined entry. so the logic should work with leaf entries.

there is a situation that is going to be hard to deal with and that is where one source has a dictionary with one or more objects at any level conflicting with a non-dictionary object, which will force a decision to replace one or the other, with implications at the level below.

i'm wondering if flattening this to a list (could help) of key,reference 2-tuples where each key is an N-tuple based on how many levels down it is.