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I have a string like "food | dairy | milk". The string may consist of more or less words. How do I turn it into a dictionary {'food': {'dairy': {'milk': {'eco': {}}}}}?

The only way I could achieve it was to create a string and then turn it into a dictionary using exec. I understand it's messy. How could I improve on it?

#!/usr/bin/env python -tt
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# I have a string that represents 'path' to place where new item should be inserted
st="food | dairy | milk"
print st,"< -- string"
keys=st.split(" | ")
print keys,"<-- keys"

new_cat="eco" # should be added
d = {i:{} for i in keys}
print d,"d"

ex_str="{"
for i in keys:
    ex_str+="\""+i+"\":{"
ex_str+="\""+str(new_cat)+"\":{}"+"}"*(len(keys)+1)
exec"nd="+ex_str
print nd,"<-- new dict"
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2 Answers 2

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You use a temporary variable:

st="food | dairy | milk"
keys=st.split(" | ")

new_cat="eco" # should be added
d = t = {} # t is my temporary dictionary

for i in keys:
    t[i] = {}
    t = t[i]
t[new_cat] = {}

print d
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Another way you can do it is going in reverse, like so:

st = "food | dairy | milk"
d = {}
new_cat="eco" # should be added

for key in reversed(st.split(" | ") + [new_cat]):
    d = {key: d}

print d
# {'food': {'dairy': {'milk': {'eco': {}}}}}

How this works is it starts with {}, then it does {the last key: what it is} ({'eco': {}}), then it does {the second to last key: what it is currently} ({'milk': {'eco': {}}}), and so on until the end.

But to make it more presentable, you should put it in a function. This also makes it more flexible, and allows it to work for more things.

def str_to_dict(separator, str_, *new_keys):
    d = {}
    for key in reversed(str_.split(seperator) + new_keys):
        d = {key: d}
    return d

print str_to_dict(" | ", "food | dairy | milk", "eco")
# {'food': {'dairy': {'milk': {'eco': {}}}}}

print str_to_dict("`", "food`dairy`milk", "eco", ("test",), 5)
# {'food': {'dairy': {'milk': {'eco': {('test',): {5: {}}}}}}}
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  • \$\begingroup\$ It looks interesting. Could you explain what does asterisk mean. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 10, 2015 at 19:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SergiiArtele The asterisk means that it can take as many arguments as it wants, and all the extra arguments will turn into a tuple called new_keys in this case. See stackoverflow.com/questions/36901/… as well. \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 10, 2015 at 19:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ for key in reversed(str_.split(separator) + new_keys): TypeError: can only concatenate list (not "tuple") to list \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 12, 2015 at 11:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SergiiArtele That seems to be a Python 2 issue. In that case, do reversed(str_.split(separator) + list(new_keys)) \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 12, 2015 at 14:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ THNX. Exactly, python 2.7 \$\endgroup\$ Commented May 12, 2015 at 15:14

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