I would like to make a deep copy of a dict in python. Unfortunately the .deepcopy() method doesn't exist for the dict. How do I do that?

>>> my_dict = {'a': [1, 2, 3], 'b': [4, 5, 6]} >>> my_copy = my_dict.deepcopy() Traceback (most recent calll last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> AttributeError: 'dict' object has no attribute 'deepcopy' >>> my_copy = my_dict.copy() >>> my_dict['a'][2] = 7 >>> my_copy['a'][2] 7

The last line should be 3.

I would like that modifications in my_dict don't impact the snapshot my_copy.

How do I do that? The solution should be compatible with Python 3.x.

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3 Answers

How about:

import copy d = { ... } d2 = copy.deepcopy(d)

Python 2 or 3:

Python 3.2 (r32:88445, Feb 20 2011, 21:30:00) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import copy >>> my_dict = {'a': [1, 2, 3], 'b': [4, 5, 6]} >>> my_copy = copy.deepcopy(my_dict) >>> my_dict['a'][2] = 7 >>> my_copy['a'][2] 3 >>>
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dict.copy() is a shallow copy function for dictionary
id is built-in function that gives you the address of variable

First you need to understand "why is this particular problem is happening?"

In [1]: my_dict = {'a': [1, 2, 3], 'b': [4, 5, 6]} In [2]: my_copy = my_dict.copy() In [3]: id(my_dict) Out[3]: 140190444167808 In [4]: id(my_copy) Out[4]: 140190444170328 In [5]: id(my_copy['a']) Out[5]: 140190444024104 In [6]: id(my_dict['a']) Out[6]: 140190444024104

The address of the list present in both the dicts for key 'a' is pointing to same location.
Therefore when you change value of the list in my_dict, the list in my_copy changes as well.

Solution for data structure mentioned in the question:

In [7]: my_copy = {key: value[:] for key, value in my_dict.items()} In [8]: id(my_copy['a']) Out[8]: 140190444024176

Or you can use deepcopy as mentioned above.

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Python 3.x

from copy import deepcopy my_dict = {'one': 1, 'two': 2} new_dict_deepcopy = deepcopy(my_dict)

Without deepcopy, I am unable to remove the hostname dictionary from within my domain dictionary.

Without deepcopy I get the following error:

"RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration"

...when I try to remove the desired element from my dictionary inside of another dictionary.

import socket import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET from copy import deepcopy

domain is a dictionary object

def remove_hostname(domain, hostname): domain_copy = deepcopy(domain) for domains, hosts in domain_copy.items(): for host, port in hosts.items(): if host == hostname: del domain[domains][host] return domain

Example output: [orginal]domains = {'localdomain': {'localhost': {'all': '4000'}}}

[new]domains = {'localdomain': {} }}

So what's going on here is I am iterating over a copy of a dictionary rather than iterating over the dictionary itself. With this method, you are able to remove elements as needed.

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