Basic Python dictionary question

Question

I have a dictionary with one key and two values and I want to set each value to a separate variable.

d= {'key' : ('value1, value2'), 'key2' : ('value3, value4'), 'key3' : ('value5, value6')}

I tried d[key][0] in the hope it would return "value1" but instead it return "v"

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Try something like this:

d = {'key' : 'value1, value2'}

list = d['key'].split(', ')

list[0] will be "value1" and list[1] will be "value2".

Answer 2

A better solution is to store your value as a two-tuple:

d = {'key' : ('value1', 'value2')}

That way you don't have to split every time you want to access the values.

Answer 3

I would suggest storing lists in your dictionary. It'd make it much easier to reference. For instance,

from collections import defaultdict

my_dict = defaultdict(list)
my_dict["key"].append("value 1")
my_dict["key"].append("value 2")

print my_dict["key"][1]

Answer 4

To obtain the two values and assign them to value1 and value2:

for v in d.itervalues():
    value1, value2 = v.split(', ')

As said by zenazn, I wouldn't consider this to be a sensible data structure, using a tuple or a class to store the multiple values would be better.

Answer 5

The way you're storing your values, you'll need something like:

value1, value2 = d['key'].split(', ')
print value1, value2

or to iterate over all values:

for key in d:
    v1, v2 = d[k].split(', ')
    print v1, v2

But, if you can, you should probably follow zenazn's suggestion of storing your values as tuples, and avoid the need to split every time.