Pair combinations of elements in dictionary without repetition

Question

In python, I have a dictionary like this...

pleio = {\'firstLine\': {\'enf1\': [\'54\', \'set\'], 
                      \'enf2\': [\'48\', \'free\'], 
                  


        

Answer 1

Your combinations approach was correct, you just need to turn the results of each combination into a dict again:

import itertools

def pairwise(input):
    for values in input.itervalues():
        for pair in itertools.combinations(values.iteritems(), 2):
            yield dict(pair)

This version is a generator, yielding pairs efficiently, nothing is held in memory any longer than absolutely necessary. If you need a list, just call list() on the generator:

list(pairwise(pleio))

Output:

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(list(pairwise(pleio)))
[{'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf3': ['34', 'set']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf3': ['34', 'set']},
 {'enf3': ['34', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf2': ['48', 'free']},
 {'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']}]

You can even combine the whole thing into a one-liner generator:

from itertools import combinations

for paired in (dict(p) for v in pleio.itervalues() for p in combinations(v.iteritems(), 2)):
    print paired

Which outputs:

>>> for paired in (dict(p) for v in pleio.itervalues() for p in combinations(v.iteritems(), 2)):
...     print paired
... 
{'enf3': ['34', 'set'], 'enf2': ['48', 'free']}
{'enf3': ['34', 'set'], 'enf1': ['54', 'set']}
{'enf3': ['34', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']}
{'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf1': ['54', 'set']}
{'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']}
{'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']}

If you are on Python 3, replace .itervalues() and .iteritems() by .values() and .items() respectively.

Answer 2

If you want all pair combinations, you could probably use the following which is shorter, but I would not say this is more efficient.

[dict([(x,vx),(y,vy)]) for (x,vx) in pleio['firstLine'].iteritems()
                       for (y,vy) in pleio['firstLine'].iteritems()
                       if x < y]

Output

[{'enf3': ['34', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']},
 {'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf3': ['34', 'set']},
 {'enf2': ['48', 'free'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf3': ['34', 'set']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf2': ['48', 'free']},
 {'enf1': ['54', 'set'], 'enf4': ['12', 'free']}]