Dictionaries & sets
Key–value maps, uniqueness, counting, grouping, and fast lookups.
How to Deep Merge Nested Dicts Recursively in Python
Recursively merge two Python dictionaries, with overlay values taking precedence while preserving nested structures.
def deep_merge(base, overlay):
"""
Recursively merge two dictionaries.
Values in 'overlay' take precedence over 'base'.
"""
result = base.copy()
for key, value in overlay.items():
if key in result and isinstance(result[key], dict) and isinstance(value, dict):
result[key…
How to Use ChainMap for Layered Config Lookup in Python
This code demonstrates using collections.ChainMap to combine multiple dictionaries into a single layered lookup, where earlier maps override later ones.
from collections import ChainMap
defaults = {"theme": "light", "lang": "en", "debug": False}
user = {"lang": "de", "auto_save": True}
runtime = {"debug": True}
config = ChainMap(runtime, user, defaults)
if __name__ == "__main__":
print("theme:", config["theme"])
print("lang:", config["lang"])
print("deb…
Parse Env Vars into Typed Dict in Python
Convert a list of environment variable names into a dictionary with automatically detected types (bool, int, float, or string), defaulting missing vars to None.
import os
from typing import Any, Dict
def parse_env_vars(env_names: list[str], env: Dict[str, str] | None = None) -> Dict[str, Any]:
"""Parse a list of environment variable names into a typed dict.
Each variable is parsed as:
- bool: "true"/"false" (case-insensitive)
- int: if it can be converted t…
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Dictionaries & sets — Python code examples
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