Comparing two dictionaries in Python

Question

I have two dictionaries, but for simplification, I will take these two:

>>> x = dict(a=1, b=2)
>>> y = dict(a=2, b=2)

Now, I want to compare whether each key, value pair in x has the same corresponding value in y. So I wrote this:

>>> for x_values, y_values in zip(x.iteritems(), y.iteritems()):
        if x_values == y_values:
            print 'Ok', x_values, y_values
        else:
            print 'Not', x_values, y_values

And it works since a tuple is returned and then compared for equality.

My questions:

Is this correct? Is there a better way to do this? Better not in speed, I am talking about code elegance.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I have to check how many key, value pairs are equal.

Answer 1

What you want to do is simply x==y

What you do is not a good idea, because the items in a dictionary are not supposed to have any order. You might be comparing [('a',1),('b',1)] with [('b',1), ('a',1)] (same dictionaries, different order).

For example, see this:

>>> x = dict(a=2, b=2,c=3, d=4)
>>> x
{'a': 2, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
>>> y = dict(b=2,c=3, d=4)
>>> y
{'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'd': 4}
>>> zip(x.iteritems(), y.iteritems())
[(('a', 2), ('c', 3)), (('c', 3), ('b', 2)), (('b', 2), ('d', 4))]

The difference is only one item, but your algorithm will see that all items are different

Answer 2

If you want to know how many values match in both the dictionaries, you should have said that :)

Maybe something like this:

shared_items = {k: x[k] for k in x if k in y and x[k] == y[k]}
print len(shared_items)

Answer 3

Yet another possibility, up to the last note of the OP, is to compare the hashes (SHA or MD) of the dicts dumped as JSON. The way hashes are constructed guarantee that if they are equal, the source strings are equal as well. This is very fast and mathematically sound.

import json
import hashlib

def hash_dict(d):
    return hashlib.sha1(json.dumps(d, sort_keys=True)).hexdigest()

x = dict(a=1, b=2)
y = dict(a=2, b=2)
z = dict(a=1, b=2)

print(hash_dict(x) == hash_dict(y))
print(hash_dict(x) == hash_dict(z))

Answer 4

To test if two dicts are equal in keys and values:

def dicts_equal(d1,d2):
    """ return True if all keys and values are the same """
    return all(k in d2 and d1[k] == d2[k]
               for k in d1) \
        and all(k in d1 and d1[k] == d2[k]
               for k in d2)

If you want to return the values which differ, write it differently:

def dict1_minus_d2(d1, d2):
    """ return the subset of d1 where the keys don't exist in d2 or
        the values in d2 are different, as a dict """
    return {k,v for k,v in d1.items() if k in d2 and v == d2[k]}

You would have to call it twice i.e

dict1_minus_d2(d1,d2).extend(dict1_minus_d2(d2,d1))

Answer 5

>>> hash_1
{'a': 'foo', 'b': 'bar'}
>>> hash_2
{'a': 'foo', 'b': 'bar'}
>>> set_1 = set (hash_1.iteritems())
>>> set_1
set([('a', 'foo'), ('b', 'bar')])
>>> set_2 = set (hash_2.iteritems())
>>> set_2
set([('a', 'foo'), ('b', 'bar')])
>>> len (set_1.difference(set_2))
0
>>> if (len(set_1.difference(set_2)) | len(set_2.difference(set_1))) == False:
...    print "The two hashes match."
...
The two hashes match.
>>> hash_2['c'] = 'baz'
>>> hash_2
{'a': 'foo', 'c': 'baz', 'b': 'bar'}
>>> if (len(set_1.difference(set_2)) | len(set_2.difference(set_1))) == False:
...     print "The two hashes match."
...
>>>
>>> hash_2.pop('c')
'baz'

Here's another option:

>>> id(hash_1)
140640738806240
>>> id(hash_2)
140640738994848

So as you see the two id's are different. But the rich comparison operators seem to do the trick:

>>> hash_1 == hash_2
True
>>>
>>> hash_2
{'a': 'foo', 'b': 'bar'}
>>> set_2 = set (hash_2.iteritems())
>>> if (len(set_1.difference(set_2)) | len(set_2.difference(set_1))) == False:
...     print "The two hashes match."
...
The two hashes match.
>>>

Answer 6

Code

def equal(a, b):
    type_a = type(a)
    type_b = type(b)

    if type_a != type_b:
        return False

    if isinstance(a, dict):
        if len(a) != len(b):
            return False
        for key in a:
            if key not in b:
                return False
            if not equal(a[key], b[key]):
                return False
        return True

    elif isinstance(a, list):
        if len(a) != len(b):
            return False
        while len(a):
            x = a.pop()
            index = indexof(x, b)
            if index == -1:
                return False
            del b[index]
        return True

    else:
        return a == b

def indexof(x, a):
    for i in range(len(a)):
        if equal(x, a[i]):
            return i
    return -1

Test

>>> a = {
    'number': 1,
    'list': ['one', 'two']
}
>>> b = {
    'list': ['two', 'one'],
    'number': 1
}
>>> equal(a, b)
True