Why doesn't a python dict.update() return the object?

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I 'm trying to do :

award_dict = {
    "url" : "http://facebook.com",
    "imageurl" : "http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3431/3939267074_feb9eb19b1_o.png",
    "count" : 1,
}

def award(name, count, points, desc_string, my_size, parent) :
    if my_size > count :
        a = {
            "name" : name,
            "description" : desc_string % count,
            "points" : points,
            "parent_award" : parent,
        }
        a.update(award_dict)
        return self.add_award(a, siteAlias, alias).award

But if felt really cumbersome in the function, and I would have rather done :

        return self.add_award({
            "name" : name,
            "description" : desc_string % count,
            "points" : points,
            "parent_award" : parent,
        }.update(award_dict), siteAlias, alias).award

Why doesn't update return the object so you can chain?

JQuery does this to do chaining. Why isn't it acceptable in python?

language-design language-features dictionary python
10 Answers

This is easy as:

(lambda d: d.update(dict2) or d)(d1)

Or, if it is important not to modify the dictionary:

(lambda d: d.update(dict2) or d)(d1.copy())
user_96687850

For those coming late to the party, I had put some timing together (Py 3.7), showing that .update() based methods look a bit (~5%) faster when inputs are preserved and noticeably (~30%) faster when just updating in-place.

As usual, all the benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt.

def join2(dict1, dict2, inplace=False):
    result = dict1 if inplace else dict1.copy()
    result.update(dict2)
    return result


def join(*items):
    iter_items = iter(items)
    result = next(iter_items).copy()
    for item in iter_items:
        result.update(item)
    return result


def update_or(dict1, dict2):
    return dict1.update(dict2) or dict1


d1 = {i: str(i) for i in range(1000000)}
d2 = {str(i): i for i in range(1000000)}

%timeit join2(d1, d2)
# 258 ms ± 1.47 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

%timeit join(d1, d2)
# 262 ms ± 2.97 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

%timeit dict(d1, **d2)
# 267 ms ± 2.74 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

%timeit {**d1, **d2}
# 267 ms ± 1.84 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

The timings for the in-place operations are a bit trickier, so it would need to be modified along an extra copy operation (the first timing is just for reference):

%timeit dd = d1.copy()
# 44.9 ms ± 495 µs per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 10 loops each)

%timeit dd = d1.copy(); join2(dd, d2)
# 296 ms ± 2.05 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

%timeit dd = d1.copy(); join2(dd, d2, True)
# 234 ms ± 1.02 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)

%timeit dd = d1.copy(); update_or(dd, d2)
# 235 ms ± 1.6 ms per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1 loop each)
user_52183540
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