Convert string to list within list of dictionaries in python

Question

I currently have a list of dictionaries like this:

[ {'id': 'ABBA', 'num': '10 3 5 1'}, {'id': 'ABAC', 'num': '4 5 6 20'}]

How can I change the value associated with the num key from a string to a list and iterate that over the list of dictionaries? Like this:

[ {'id': 'ABBA', 'num': ['10','3','5','1']}, {'id': 'ABAC', 'num': ['4', '5', '6' '20']}]

I know there are similar questions out there on how to loop through a list of dictionaries and changing a string to a list, but I can't seem to put all of these together.

I've tried:

for i in list_of_dictionaries:
    for id, num in i.items():
        for val in num:
            val = val.split()
            print(val)
print(list_of_dictionaries)

But I get [] for val and then the same unchanged list of dictionaries back.

Sorry, I realized I made a mistake when typing the simplified example. It should read [{stuff},{stuff}] and there should be brackets around the numbers to denote a list of what I want to get: num: ['10','3','5','1']. edited Is that better? I can post the actual code but it's lengthy. — user14278898
– user14278898, Commented Sep 17, 2020 at 7:13

Karthik · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-17 07:19:36Z

1

Please check the snippet

a=[ {'id': 'ABBA', 'num': '10 3 5 1'}, {'id': 'ABAC', 'num': '4 5 6 20'}]
for i in a:
    i['num']=i['num'].split(' ')

#[{'id': 'ABBA', 'num': ['10', '3', '5', '1']}, {'id': 'ABAC', 'num': ['4', '5', '6', '20']}]

answered Sep 17, 2020 at 7:19

Karthik

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Comments

F.NiX · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-17 07:24:26Z

1

Use this instead:

for i in list_of_dictionaries:
    val = i['num'].split()
    print(val)
    i['num'] = val
print(list_of_dictionaries)

By the way notice that string keys for dictionaries should be inside quotes.

As you can see updating the value of i['num'] when you are iterating over list_of_dictionaries with i variable, changes the main list. So you don't need to create a new list and append new items each time.

edited Sep 17, 2020 at 7:24

answered Sep 17, 2020 at 7:19

F.NiX

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1 Comment

user14278898 Over a year ago

Thank you for the clarification! I am new to Python and still not used to the syntax.

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