Many-to-one mapping (creating equivalence classes)

Question

I have a project of converting one database to another. One of the original database columns defines the row\'s category. This column should be mapped to a new category in t

Answer 1

>>> monty={ ('parrot','spam','cheese_shop'): 'sketch', 
        ('Cleese', 'Gilliam', 'Palin') : 'actors'}

>>> item=lambda x:[z for y,z in monty.items() if x in y][0]
>>>
>>> item("parrot")
'sketch'
>>> item("Cleese")
'actors'

But let me tell you, It will be slow than normal one to one dictionary.