pythonrecursiondefaultdictautovivification

Nested defaultdict of defaultdict

Is there a way to make a defaultdict also be the default for the defaultdict? (i.e. infinite-level recursive defaultdict?)

I want to be able to do:

x = defaultdict(...stuff...)
x[0][1][0]
{}

So, I can do x = defaultdict(defaultdict), but that's only a second level:

x[0]
{}
x[0][0]
KeyError: 0

There are recipes that can do this. But can it be done simply just using the normal defaultdict arguments?

Note this is asking how to do an infinite-level recursive defaultdict, so it's distinct to Python: defaultdict of defaultdict?, which was how to do a two-level defaultdict.

I'll probably just end up using the bunch pattern, but when I realized I didn't know how to do this, it got me interested.

Solution

  • For an arbitrary number of levels:

    def rec_dd():
    return defaultdict(rec_dd)

>>> x = rec_dd()
>>> x['a']['b']['c']['d']
defaultdict(<function rec_dd at 0x7f0dcef81500>, {})
>>> print json.dumps(x)
{"a": {"b": {"c": {"d": {}}}}}

    Of course you could also do this with a lambda, but I find lambdas to be less readable. In any case it would look like this:

    rec_dd = lambda: defaultdict(rec_dd)