What is the preferred syntax for initializing a dict?

Question

I'm putting in some effort to learn Python, and I am paying close attention to common coding standards. This may seem like a pointlessly nit-picky question, but I am trying to focus on best-practices as I learn, so I don't have to unlearn any 'bad' habits.

I see two common methods for initializing a dict:

a = {
    'a': 'value',
    'another': 'value',
}

b = dict( 
    a='value',
    another='value',
)

Which is considered to be "more pythonic"? Which do you use? Why?

Answer 1

The first, curly braces. Otherwise, you run into consistency issues with keys that have odd characters in them, like =.

# Works fine.
a = {
    'a': 'value',
    'b=c': 'value',
}

# Eeep! Breaks if trying to be consistent.
b = dict( 
    a='value',
    b=c='value',
)

Answer 2

The first version is preferable:

• It works for all kinds of keys, so you can, for example, say {1: 'one', 2: 'two'}. The second variant only works for (some) string keys. Using different kinds of syntax depending on the type of the keys would be an unnecessary inconsistency.

• It is faster:

  $ python -m timeit "dict(a='value', another='value')"
  1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.79 usec per loop
  $ python -m timeit "{'a': 'value','another': 'value'}"
  1000000 loops, best of 3: 0.305 usec per loop
  

• If the special syntax for dictionary literals wasn't intended to be used, it probably wouldn't exist.

Answer 3

Curly braces. Passing keyword arguments into dict(), though it works beautifully in a lot of scenarios, can only initial a map those keys are valid Python identifier.

I.e. it cannot do

a= { 'import': 'trade', 1: 7.8 }