Efficiently building ordered dict

Bryan bryanvick at gmail.com
Mon Feb 22 16:29:26 EST 2010


On Feb 22, 10:57 am, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al... at start.no> wrote:
> * Bryan:
>
>
>
> > I am looping through a list and creating a regular dictionary.  From
> > that dict, I create an ordered dict.  I can't think of a way to build
> > the ordered dict while going through the original loop.  Is there a
> > way I can avoid creating the first unordered dict just to get the
> > ordered dict?  Also, I am using pop(k) to retrieve the values from the
> > unordered dict while building the ordered one because I figure that as
> > the values are removed from the unordered dict, the lookups will
> > become faster.  Is there a better idiom that the code below to create
> > an ordered dict from an unordered list?
>
> > unorderedDict = {}
> > for thing in unorderedList:
> >    if thing.id in unorderedDict:
> >            UpdateExistingValue(unorderedDict[thing.id])
> >    else:
> >            CreateNewValue(unorderedDict[thing.id])
>
> If this were real code the last statement would generate an exception.
>
> > orderedDict = OrderedDict()
> > for k in sorted(unorderedDict.keys()):
> >    orderedDict[k]  unorderedDict.pop(k)
>
> This is not even valid syntax.
>
> Please
>
>    (1) explain the problem that you're trying to solve, not how you
>        imagine the solution, and
>
>    (2) if you have any code, please post real code (copy and paste).
>
> The above code is not real.
>
> Cheers & hth.,
>
> - Alf

Sorry about the sorted != ordered mix up.  I want to end up with a
*sorted* dict from an unordered list.  *Sorting the list is not
practical in this case.*  I am using python 2.5, with an ActiveState
recipe for an OrderedDict.

Given these requirements/limitations, how would you do it?

My solution is to create a regular dict from the list.  Then sort the
keys, and add the keys+values to an OrderedDict.  Since the keys are
being added to the OrderedDict in the correctly sorted order, at the
end I end up with a OrderedDict that is in the correctly *sorted*
order.

self.accTotals = {}
for row in self.rows:
	if row.acc.code in self.accTotals:
		self.accTotals[row.acc.code].addRow(row)
	else:
		accSummary = Total()
		accSummary.addRow(row)
		self.accTotals[row.acc.code] = accSummary
self.accTotals = self._getOrderedDict(self.accTotals)



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