How to merge dictionaries of dictionaries?

Question

I need to merge multiple dictionaries, here\'s what I have for instance:

dict1 = {1:{\"a\":{A}}, 2:{\"b\":{B}}}

dict2 = {2:{\"c\":{C}}, 3:{\"d\":{D}}
         


        

Answer 1

There's a slight problem with andrew cookes answer: In some cases it modifies the second argument b when you modify the returned dict. Specifically it's because of this line:

if key in a:
    ...
else:
    a[key] = b[key]

If b[key] is a dict, it will simply be assigned to a, meaning any subsequent modifications to that dict will affect both a and b.

a={}
b={'1':{'2':'b'}}
c={'1':{'3':'c'}}
merge(merge(a,b), c) # {'1': {'3': 'c', '2': 'b'}}
a # {'1': {'3': 'c', '2': 'b'}} (as expected)
b # {'1': {'3': 'c', '2': 'b'}} <----
c # {'1': {'3': 'c'}} (unmodified)

To fix this, the line would have to be substituted with this:

if isinstance(b[key], dict):
    a[key] = clone_dict(b[key])
else:
    a[key] = b[key]

Where clone_dict is:

def clone_dict(obj):
    clone = {}
    for key, value in obj.iteritems():
        if isinstance(value, dict):
            clone[key] = clone_dict(value)
        else:
            clone[key] = value
    return

Still. This obviously doesn't account for list, set and other stuff, but I hope it illustrates the pitfalls when trying to merge dicts.

And for completeness sake, here is my version, where you can pass it multiple dicts:

def merge_dicts(*args):
    def clone_dict(obj):
        clone = {}
        for key, value in obj.iteritems():
            if isinstance(value, dict):
                clone[key] = clone_dict(value)
            else:
                clone[key] = value
        return

    def merge(a, b, path=[]):
        for key in b:
            if key in a:
                if isinstance(a[key], dict) and isinstance(b[key], dict):
                    merge(a[key], b[key], path + [str(key)])
                elif a[key] == b[key]:
                    pass
                else:
                    raise Exception('Conflict at `{path}\''.format(path='.'.join(path + [str(key)])))
            else:
                if isinstance(b[key], dict):
                    a[key] = clone_dict(b[key])
                else:
                    a[key] = b[key]
        return a
    return reduce(merge, args, {})