Merge two dictionaries and keep the values for duplicate keys in Python

Question

Let\'s suppose that I have two dictionaries:

dic1 =  { \"first\":1, \"second\":4, \"third\":8} 
dic2 =  { \"first\":9, \"second\":5, \"fourth\":3}

Answer 1

Given:

dic1 =  { "first":1, "second":4, "third":8} 
dic2 =  { "first":9, "second":5, "fourth":3}

You can use .setdefault:

dic_new={}
for k,v in list(dic1.items())+list(dic2.items()):
    dic_new.setdefault(k, []).append(v)
else:
    dic_new={k:v if len(v)>1 else v[0] for k,v in dic_new.items()}  

>>> dic_new
{'first': [1, 9], 'second': [4, 5], 'third': 8, 'fourth': 3}

This produces the output in question. I think that flattening the single elements lists to a different object type is an unnecessary complexity.

---

With the edit, this produces the desired result:

dic_new={}
for k,v in list(dic1.items())+list(dic2.items()):
    dic_new.setdefault(k, []).append(v)

>>> dic_new
{'first': [1, 9], 'second': [4, 5], 'third': [8], 'fourth': [3]}

Answer 2

Create a new dictionary dic having for keys the keys of dic1 and dic2 and value an empty list, then iterate over dic1 and dic2 appending values to dic:

dic1 =  { "first":1, "second":4, "third":8} 
dic2 =  { "first":9, "second":5, "fourth":3}

dic = {key:[] for key in list(dic1.keys()) + list(dic2.keys())}

for key in dic1.keys():
    dic[key].append(dic1[key])

for key in dic2.keys():
    dic[key].append(dic2[key])