What’s a major advantage of using dictionaries over lists in python
Python supports various in-built data structures to make the programming easy and efficient like any other programming language. All these python data structures are sequential and store data collection in various formats, unlike others. List and dictionary are some of those python data structures that are simple yet powerful and store a wide range of data. This article will explain list and dictionary data structure and their difference and when to use list vs. dictionary in Python.
What is a Python Dictionary and How Does it Work?
Believe it or not, a Python dictionary works in a very similar way to a regular dictionary. Python offers many different data structures to hold information, and the dictionary is one of the simplest and most useful. While many things in Python are iterables, not all of them are sequences and a Python dictionary falls in this category. In this article, we will talk about what a Python dictionary is, how it works, and what are its most common applications.
Difference between list and dictionary
List and dictionary are fundamentally different data structures . A list can store a sequence of objects in a certain order such that you can index into the list, or iterate over the list. Moreover, List is a mutable type meaning that lists can be modified after they have been created. Python dictionary is an implementation of a hash table and is a key-value store. It is not ordered and it requires that the keys are hashtable. Also, it is fast for lookups by key.
Elements in a list have the following characteristics:
- They maintain their ordering unless explicitly re-ordered (for example, by sorting the list).
- They can be of any type, and types can be mixed.
- They are accessed via numeric (zero based) indices.
Elements in a Dictionary have the following characteristics:
- Every entry has a key and a value
- Ordering is not guaranteed
- Elements are accessed using key values
- Key values can be of any hashtable type (i.e. not a dict) and types can be mixed
- Values can be of any type (including other dict’s), and types can be mixed
Use a dictionary when you have a set of unique keys that map to values and to use a list if you have an ordered collection of items.
Next:Different file processing modes supported by Python
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