Collections¶
collections is a built-in Python library to deal with Python dictionary efficiently. This section will show you some useful methods of this module.
collections.Counter: Count The Occurrences of Items in a List¶
Counting the occurrences of each item in a list using a for-loop is slow and inefficient.
char_list = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'a', 'd', 'b', 'b']
def custom_counter(list_: list):
char_counter = {}
for char in list_:
if char not in char_counter:
char_counter[char] = 1
else:
char_counter[char] += 1
return char_counter
custom_counter(char_list)
{'a': 2, 'b': 3, 'c': 1, 'd': 1}
Using collections.Counter is more efficient, and all it takes is one line of code!
from collections import Counter
Counter(char_list)
Counter({'a': 2, 'b': 3, 'c': 1, 'd': 1})
In my experiment, using Counter is more than 2 times faster than using a custom counter.
from timeit import timeit
import random
random.seed(0)
num_list = [random.randint(0,22) for _ in range(1000)]
numExp = 100
custom_time = timeit("custom_counter(num_list)", globals=globals())
counter_time = timeit("Counter(num_list)", globals=globals())
print(custom_time/counter_time)
2.6199148843686806
namedtuple: A Lightweight Python Structure to Mange your Data¶
If you need a small class to manage data in your project, consider using namedtuple.
namedtuple object is like a tuple but can be used as a normal Python class.
In the code below, I use namedtuple to create a Person object with attributes name and gender.
from collections import namedtuple
Person = namedtuple("Person", "name gender")
oliver = Person("Oliver", "male")
khuyen = Person("Khuyen", "female")
Just like Python class, you can access attributes of namedtuple using obj.attr.
Defaultdict: Return a Default Value When a Key is Not Available¶
If you want to create a Python dictionary with default value, use defaultdict. When calling a key that is not in the dictionary, the default value is returned.
from collections import defaultdict
classes = defaultdict(lambda: 'Outside')
classes['Math'] = 'B23'
classes['Physics'] = 'D24'
classes['Math']
'B23'
classes['English']
'Outside'
Defaultdict: Create a Dictionary with Values that are List¶
If you want to create a dictionary with the values that are list, the cleanest way is to pass a list class to a defaultdict.
from collections import defaultdict
# Instead of this
food_price = {'apple': [], 'orange': []}
# Use this
food_price = defaultdict(list)
for i in range(1, 4):
food_price['apple'].append(i)
food_price['orange'].append(i)
print(food_price.items())
dict_items([('apple', [1, 2, 3]), ('orange', [1, 2, 3])])