Fast way to copy dictionary in Python

Question

I have a Python program that works with dictionaries a lot. I have to make copies of dictionaries thousands of times. I need a copy of both the keys and the associated conte

Answer 1

The measurments are dependent on the dictionary size though. For 10000 entries copy(d) and d.copy() are almost the same.

a = {b: b for b in range(10000)} 
In [5]: %timeit copy(a)
10000 loops, best of 3: 186 µs per loop
In [6]: %timeit deepcopy(a)
100 loops, best of 3: 14.1 ms per loop
In [7]: %timeit a.copy()
1000 loops, best of 3: 180 µs per loop