newbie: dictionary - howto get key value

[Bengt Richter]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:56:41 +0100, bruno modulix <onurb at xiludom.gro> wrote:

>G. Völkl wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I use a dictionary:
>> 
>> phone = {'mike':10,'sue':8,'john':3}
>> 
>> phone['mike']   --> 10
>> 
>> I want to know who has number 3?
>> 3 -->  'john'
>
>Note that you can have many keys with the same value:
>phone = {'mike':10,'sue':8,'john':3, 'jack': 3, 'helen' : 10}
>
>
>> How to get it in the python way ?
>
>simplest way I could think of in 30':
>def key_from_value(aDict, target):
>   return [key for key, value in aDict.items() if value==target]
>
>key_from_value(phone, 3)
>--> ['john', 'jack']
>
>but this is a linear search, so not very efficient if phone is big.
>Then you may want to maintain a reversed index:
>(here again, simplest way I could think of)
>
>def rev_index(aDict):
>   r = {}
>   for key, value in aDict.items():
>     if r.has_key(value):
>       r[value].append(key)
>     else:
>       r[value] = [key]
>    return r
>rev_phone = rev_index(phone)
>rev_phone
>--> {8: ['sue'], 10: ['helen', 'mike'], 3: ['john', 'jack']}
>
>{8: ['sue'], 10: ['helen', 'mike'], 3: ['john', 'jack']}
>
>rev_phone[3]
>--> ['john', 'jack']
>
>But now you've got another problem : you need to update the reversed 
>index each time you modify the dictionary... Which would lead to writing 
>a class extending dict, maintaining a reversed index, and exposing extra 
>methods to handle this.
>
Not very tested:

----< twoway.py >--------------------
class Twoway(dict):
    def __setitem__(self, name, number):
        dict.__setitem__(self, name, number)
        self.setdefault(number, []).append(name)
    def __delitem__(self, name):
        num = self[name]
        dict.__delitem__(self, name)
        self[num].remove(name)
        if not self[num]: del self[num]
    def __init__(self, src=None):
        if src is None: return
        dict.__init__(self, src)
        for name, num in self.items(): self.setdefault(num, []).append(name)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    phone = Twoway({'mike':10,'sue':8,'john':3, 'jack': 3, 'helen' : 10})
    print 'jack:', phone['jack']
    print 'same phone as jack:', phone[phone['jack']]
    print 'deleting jack ...'; del phone['jack']
    print 'john:', phone['john']
    print phone
-------------------------------------

[13:05] C:\pywk\sovm>py24 twoway.py
jack: 3
same phone as jack: ['john', 'jack']
deleting jack ...
john: 3
{'mike': 10, 3: ['john'], 8: ['sue'], 10: ['mike', 'helen'], 'sue': 8, 'helen': 10, 'john': 3}

Regards,
Bengt Richter