How to copy a dictionary and only edit the copy

Question

Can someone please explain this to me? This doesn\'t make any sense to me.

I copy a dictionary into another and edit the second and both are changed. Why is this hap

Answer 1

dict1 is a symbol that references an underlying dictionary object. Assigning dict1 to dict2 merely assigns the same reference. Changing a key's value via the dict2 symbol changes the underlying object, which also affects dict1. This is confusing.

It is far easier to reason about immutable values than references, so make copies whenever possible:

person = {'name': 'Mary', 'age': 25}
one_year_later = {**person, 'age': 26}  # does not mutate person dict

This is syntactically the same as:

one_year_later = dict(person, age=26)