Loop through all nested dictionary values?

Question

for k, v in d.iteritems():
    if type(v) is dict:
        for t, c in v.iteritems():
            print \"{0} : {1}\".format(t, c)

I\'m trying to l

Answer 1

There are potential problems if you write your own recursive implementation or the iterative equivalent with stack. See this example:

    dic = {}
    dic["key1"] = {}
    dic["key1"]["key1.1"] = "value1"
    dic["key2"]  = {}
    dic["key2"]["key2.1"] = "value2"
    dic["key2"]["key2.2"] = dic["key1"]
    dic["key2"]["key2.3"] = dic

In the normal sense, nested dictionary will be a n-nary tree like data structure. But the definition doesn't exclude the possibility of a cross edge or even a back edge (thus no longer a tree). For instance, here key2.2 holds to the dictionary from key1, key2.3 points to the entire dictionary(back edge/cycle). When there is a back edge(cycle), the stack/recursion will run infinitely.

                          root<-------back edge
                        /      \           |
                     _key1   __key2__      |
                    /       /   \    \     |
               |->key1.1 key2.1 key2.2 key2.3
               |   /       |      |
               | value1  value2   |
               |                  | 
              cross edge----------|

If you print this dictionary with this implementation from Scharron

    def myprint(d):
      for k, v in d.items():
        if isinstance(v, dict):
          myprint(v)
        else:
          print "{0} : {1}".format(k, v)

You would see this error:

    RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded while calling a Python object

The same goes with the implementation from senderle.

Similarly, you get an infinite loop with this implementation from Fred Foo:

    def myprint(d):
        stack = list(d.items())
        while stack:
            k, v = stack.pop()
            if isinstance(v, dict):
                stack.extend(v.items())
            else:
                print("%s: %s" % (k, v))

However, Python actually detects cycles in nested dictionary:

    print dic
    {'key2': {'key2.1': 'value2', 'key2.3': {...}, 
       'key2.2': {'key1.1': 'value1'}}, 'key1': {'key1.1': 'value1'}}

"{...}" is where a cycle is detected.

As requested by Moondra this is a way to avoid cycles (DFS):

def myprint(d): 
  stack = list(d.items()) 
  visited = set() 
  while stack: 
    k, v = stack.pop() 
    if isinstance(v, dict): 
      if k not in visited: 
        stack.extend(v.items()) 
      else: 
        print("%s: %s" % (k, v)) 
      visited.add(k)