Basic list/dictionary question

[Daniel Jowett]

Thanks Chris,
  yes it's becoming clearer now.
And defaultdict looks nice - unfortunately I'm stuck to python 2.4 as I'm
using Plone.

Thanks again,
Daniel


2009/11/11 Chris Rebert <clp2 at rebertia.com>

> On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 4:16 AM, Daniel Jowett <daniel.jowett at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > I'm trying to categorize items in a list, by copying them into a
> > dictionary...
> > A simple example with strings doesn't seem to work how I'd expect:
> >
> >>>> basket = ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana']
> >>>> d = {}
> >>>> d = d.fromkeys(basket, [])
> >>>> d
> > {'orange': [], 'pear': [], 'apple': [], 'banana': []}
> >>>> for fruit in basket:
> > ...     d[fruit].append(fruit)
> > ...
> >
> > No if I print d I'd EXPECT....
> >>>> d
> > {'orange': ['orange', 'orange'], 'pear': ['pear'], 'apple': ['apple',
> > 'apple'], 'banana': ['banana']}
> >
> > But what I GET is....
> >>>> d
> > {'orange': ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'],
> 'pear':
> > ['apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'], 'apple':
> ['apple',
> > 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana'], 'banana': ['apple',
> > 'orange', 'apple', 'pear', 'orange', 'banana']}
> >>>>
> >
> > From what I can work out, there is only ONE list that is referenced from
> the
> > dictionary 4 times. Which would be because the same empty list is
> assigned
> > to every key in the dictionary by the "fromkeys" line. But that seems
> > seriously counter-intuitive to me...
>
> Python doesn't do any extra copying in most places unless you
> /explicitly/ do so yourself or ask it to; so yes, in this case, Python
> just copies references to the same object and does not copy the object
> itself.
>
> You'd probably be better off using a defaultdict in your particular
> usecase:
> http://docs.python.org/library/collections.html#collections.defaultdict
>
> Or and so you avoid running into it, default argument values aren't
> copied either:
> In [2]: def foo(z, a=[]):
>   ...:         a.append(z)
>   ...:     return a
>   ...:
>
> In [3]: foo(1)
> Out[3]: [1]
>
> In [4]: foo(2)
> Out[4]: [1, 2]
>
> In [5]: foo(2)
> Out[5]: [1, 2, 2]
>
> In [6]: foo(3)
> Out[6]: [1, 2, 2, 3]
>
> In [7]: foo(4,[])
> Out[7]: [4]
>
> In [8]: foo(5)
> Out[8]: [1, 2, 2, 3, 5]
>
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
> --
> http://blog.rebertia.com
>
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