Dictionary Comprehension in Python 3

Question

I found the following stack overflow post about dict comprehensions in Python2.7 and Python 3+: Create a dictionary with list comprehension in Pyth

Answer 1

Dictionary comprehension means generating items in the dictionary by some logic:

x = {p: p*p for p in range(10)}

print(x)

y = {q: q*3 for q in range(5,15) if q%2!=0}

print(y)

Answer 2

Looping over a dictionary only yields the keys. Use d.items() to loop over both keys and values:

{key: value for key, value in d.items()}

The ValueError exception you see is not a dict comprehension problem, nor is it limited to Python 3; you'd see the same problem in Python 2 or with a regular for loop:

>>> d = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4}
>>> for key, value in d:
...     print key, value
... 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: need more than 1 value to unpack

because each iteration there is only one item being yielded.

Without a transformation, {k: v for k, v in d.items()} is just a verbose and costly d.copy(); use a dict comprehension only when you do a little more with the keys or values, or use conditions or a more complex loop construct.

Answer 3

Well said above - you can drop items in Python3 if you do it this way:

{key: d[key] for key in d}

d = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4}
z = {x: d[x] for x in d}
z
>>>{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}

and this provides for the ability to use conditions as well

y = {x: d[x] for x in d if d[x] > 1}
y
>>>{'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4}

Enjoy!