CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonloopsoptimization
System
System

Reputation: 241

Optimization of data input

I have an array whose elements I would like to increment when a new user votes. For example if there are 10 options, from 1 to 10 and one user voted i=3 it would be easy to write:

A[i] = A[i] + 1;

In the case where the options are from 'A' to 'I', how can I do this? Because I can't use the letter to point to a specific array element.

For a few thousand users, I don't want to do an embedded loop where I search all elements of the array to see to which one the choice 'i' corresponds to each time.

Can I do this in O(n) time?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 61

Answers (1)

Mauricio Cortazar
Mauricio Cortazar

Reputation: 4213

Is as simple as using dictionaries, a dictionary is like an array where instead of having index you have a key and for each key there is a value. For more information visit https://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/python_dictionary.htm

So in your example just define a dictionary like this:

data = {'A': 0, 'B': 0, 'C': 0 .....}

then find the letter that you want to upvote and increase it:

data['A'] += 1
print(data['A'])
>>> {'A': 1, 'B': 0, 'C': 0}

Even you can have dictionaries inside dictionaries, example:

data = {'A': {'Votes':0, 'Description': ''}, 'B': {'Votes':0, 'Description': ''}, 'C': {'Votes':0, 'Description': ''} .....}
data['A']['Votes'] += 1

Upvotes: 2

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