Rename a dictionary key

Question

Is there a way to rename a dictionary key, without reassigning its value to a new name and removing the old name key; and without iterating through dict key/value?

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Answer 1

For a regular dict, you can use:

mydict[k_new] = mydict.pop(k_old)

This will move the item to the end of the dict, unless k_new was already existing in which case it will overwrite the value in-place.

For a Python 3.7+ dict where you additionally want to preserve the ordering, the simplest is to rebuild an entirely new instance. For example, renaming key 2 to 'two':

>>> d = {0:0, 1:1, 2:2, 3:3}
>>> {"two" if k == 2 else k:v for k,v in d.items()}
{0: 0, 1: 1, 'two': 2, 3: 3}

The same is true for an OrderedDict, where you can't use dict comprehension syntax, but you can use a generator expression:

OrderedDict((k_new if k == k_old else k, v) for k, v in od.items())

Modifying the key itself, as the question asks for, is impractical because keys are hashable which usually implies they're immutable and can't be modified.

Answer 2

In Python 3.6 (onwards?) I would go for the following one-liner

test = {'a': 1, 'old': 2, 'c': 3}
old_k = 'old'
new_k = 'new'
new_v = 4  # optional

print(dict((new_k, new_v) if k == old_k else (k, v) for k, v in test.items()))

which produces

{'a': 1, 'new': 4, 'c': 3}

May be worth noting that without the print statement the ipython console/jupyter notebook present the dictionary in an order of their choosing...

Answer 3

In case someone wants to rename all the keys at once providing a list with the new names:

def rename_keys(dict_, new_keys):
    """
     new_keys: type List(), must match length of dict_
    """

    # dict_ = {oldK: value}
    # d1={oldK:newK,} maps old keys to the new ones:  
    d1 = dict( zip( list(dict_.keys()), new_keys) )

          # d1{oldK} == new_key 
    return {d1[oldK]: value for oldK, value in dict_.items()}

Answer 4

A few people before me mentioned the .pop trick to delete and create a key in a one-liner.

I personally find the more explicit implementation more readable:

d = {'a': 1, 'b': 2}
v = d['b']
del d['b']
d['c'] = v

The code above returns {'a': 1, 'c': 2}

Answer 5

I came up with this function which does not mutate the original dictionary. This function also supports list of dictionaries too.

import functools
from typing import Union, Dict, List


def rename_dict_keys(
    data: Union[Dict, List[Dict]], old_key: str, new_key: str
):
    """
    This function renames dictionary keys

    :param data:
    :param old_key:
    :param new_key:
    :return: Union[Dict, List[Dict]]
    """
    if isinstance(data, dict):
        res = {k: v for k, v in data.items() if k != old_key}
        try:
            res[new_key] = data[old_key]
        except KeyError:
            raise KeyError(
                "cannot rename key as old key '%s' is not present in data"
                % old_key
            )
        return res
    elif isinstance(data, list):
        return list(
            map(
                functools.partial(
                    rename_dict_keys, old_key=old_key, new_key=new_key
                ),
                data,
            )
        )
    raise ValueError("expected type List[Dict] or Dict got '%s' for data" % type(data))

Answer 6

Suppose you want to rename key k3 to k4:

temp_dict = {'k1':'v1', 'k2':'v2', 'k3':'v3'}
temp_dict['k4']= temp_dict.pop('k3')