I need a little bit of homework help. I have to write a function that combines several dictionaries into new dictionary. If a key appears more than once; the values corresponding to that key in the new dictionary should be a unique list. As an example this is what I have so far:
f = {'a': 'apple', 'c': 'cat', 'b': 'bat', 'd': 'dog'}
g = {'c': 'car', 'b': 'bat', 'e': 'elephant'}
h = {'b': 'boy', 'd': 'deer'}
r = {'a': 'adam'}
def merge(*d):
newdicts={}
for dict in d:
for k in dict.items():
if k[0] in newdicts:
newdicts[k[0]].append(k[1])
else:
newdicts[k[0]]=[k[1]]
return newdicts
combined = merge(f, g, h, r)
print(combined)
The output looks like:
{'a': ['apple', 'adam'], 'c': ['cat', 'car'], 'b': ['bat', 'bat', 'boy'], 'e': ['elephant'], 'd': ['dog', 'deer']}
Under the 'b' key, 'bat' appears twice. How do I remove the duplicates?
I've looked under filter, lambda but I couldn't figure out how to use with (maybe b/c it's a list in a dictionary?)
Any help would be appreciated. And thank you in advance for all your help!
解决方案
Just test for the element inside the list before adding it: -
for k in dict.items():
if k[0] in newdicts:
if k[1] not in newdicts[k[0]]: # Do this test before adding.
newdicts[k[0]].append(k[1])
else:
newdicts[k[0]]=[k[1]]
And since you want just unique elements in the value list, then you can just use a Set as value instead. Also, you can use a defaultdict here, so that you don't have to test for key existence before adding.
Also, don't use built-in for your as your variable names. Instead of dict some other variable.
So, you can modify your merge method as:
from collections import defaultdict
def merge(*d):
newdicts = defaultdict(set) # Define a defaultdict
for each_dict in d:
# dict.items() returns a list of (k, v) tuple.
# So, you can directly unpack the tuple in two loop variables.
for k, v in each_dict.items():
newdicts[k].add(v)
# And if you want the exact representation that you have shown
# You can build a normal dict out of your newly built dict.
unique = {key: list(value) for key, value in newdicts.items()}
return unique