Hello,
I use a dictionary:
phone = {'mike':10,'sue':8,'john':3}
phone['mike'] --> 10
I want to know who has number 3? 3 --> 'john'
Note that you can have many keys with the same value: phone = {'mike':10,'sue':8,'john':3, 'jack': 3, 'helen' : 10}
How to get it in the python way ?
simplest way I could think of in 30': def key_from_value(aDict, target): return [key for key, value in aDict.items() if value==target]
key_from_value(phone, 3) --> ['john', 'jack']
but this is a linear search, so not very efficient if phone is big. Then you may want to maintain a reversed index: (here again, simplest way I could think of)
def rev_index(aDict): r = {} for key, value in aDict.items(): if r.has_key(value): r[value].append(key) else: r[value] = [key] return r rev_phone = rev_index(phone) rev_phone --> {8: ['sue'], 10: ['helen', 'mike'], 3: ['john', 'jack']}
{8: ['sue'], 10: ['helen', 'mike'], 3: ['john', 'jack']}
rev_phone[3] --> ['john', 'jack']
But now you've got another problem : you need to update the reversed index each time you modify the dictionary... Which would lead to writing a class extending dict, maintaining a reversed index, and exposing extra methods to handle this.
But there may be a better way (someone else ?)
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bruno desthuilliers
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