Here's the thought:
dict1 = {key1:3, key2:5, key3:key1+key2}
# so key3 relate to the value: 8 (3+5)
dict1.update({key2:6})
# key3 will now relate to the value: 9 (3+6)
I'm trying to avoid updating more entries than necessary as well as building new relations of key-value that's based on values that has already been calculated in a series of lookups and updates while comparing values of relations. The dictionarys' hashability is crucial to get me a more or less constant time on lookup.
This isn't a general solution but roughly works for your example:
class DynamicDict(dict):
def __getitem__(self, key):
value = super(DynamicDict, self).__getitem__(key)
return eval(value, self) if isinstance(value, str) else value
>>> d = DynamicDict(key1=3, key2=5, key3='key1+key2')
>>> d.update({'key2': 6})
>>> d['key3']
9
You can do this by creating a subclass of dict
and overriding the __getitem__
method:
class My_dict(dict):
def __getitem__(self, key):
if key == 'key3':
return self['key1'] + self['key2']
return dict.__getitem__(self, key)
dict1 = My_dict(key1=3, key2=5)
print dict1['key3'] #prints 8
dict1.update({'key2':6})
print dict1['key3'] #prints 9