Flatten nested dictionaries, compressing keys

Question

Suppose you have a dictionary like:

{\'a\': 1,
 \'c\': {\'a\': 2,
       \'b\': {\'x\': 5,
             \'y\' : 10}},
 \'d\': [1, 2, 3]}

Ho

Answer 1

Code:

test = {'a': 1, 'c': {'a': 2, 'b': {'x': 5, 'y' : 10}}, 'd': [1, 2, 3]}

def parse_dict(init, lkey=''):
    ret = {}
    for rkey,val in init.items():
        key = lkey+rkey
        if isinstance(val, dict):
            ret.update(parse_dict(val, key+'_'))
        else:
            ret[key] = val
    return ret

print(parse_dict(test,''))

Results:

$ python test.py
{'a': 1, 'c_a': 2, 'c_b_x': 5, 'd': [1, 2, 3], 'c_b_y': 10}

I am using python3.2, update for your version of python.