CODEWITHSUNDEEP
python
dyao
dyao

Reputation: 1011

Joining two lists with unequal number of elements into a dictionary

so lets say I have two lists, one with the names of directors and the other with the name of movies.

So:

directors = ['Tarr', 'Lynch' 'Coen']
movies = ['movie1', 'movie2', 'movie3', 'movie4']

End result I want:

{'movie1':'Tarr', 'movie2':'Tarr', 'movie3':'Lynch', 'movie4':'Tarr'}

But wait a minute? What about Coen? The other thing I want is that the value (director) to be randomly selected.

The part I'm really having trouble with is forcing the dictionary to show 4 elements. Python is only giving me 3 since the directors list only contains 3 directors even though there are 4 movies.

Thanks guys.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 485

Answers (3)

Ben
Ben

Reputation: 6777

Try this:

from random import choice

results = {}
for movie in movies:
    results[movie] = choice(directors)

This will choose a random director for each movie in the movies list, and store them in a results dictionary.

You could do the same thing with a dictionary comprehension:

from random import choice

results = {x: choice(directors) for x in movies}

Upvotes: 4

das-g
das-g

Reputation: 9994

To make Ben's answer even more pythonic, use a dictionary comprehension (available in Python ≥ 2.7):

import random

directors = ['Tarr', 'Lynch' 'Coen']
movies = ['movie1', 'movie2', 'movie3', 'movie4']

results = { movie : random.choice(directors) for movie in movies }

(I like to simply import random instead of from random import choice, so I can refer to random.choice by its fully qualified name and thus get code that's telling the reader that it's performing a random choice.)

Upvotes: 2

Abd Azrad
Abd Azrad

Reputation: 311

You might want to tell us if you are choosing with replacement or not. Anyway I hope this helps (this is with replacement):

import random

directors = ['Tarr', 'Lynch' 'Coen']
movies = ['movie1', 'movie2', 'movie3', 'movie4']
my_dictionary = {}
for each_movie in movies:
    my_dictionary[each_movie] = random.choice(directors)
print my_dictionary

Upvotes: 2

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