Storing and updating lists in Python dictionaries: why does this happen?

Question

I have a list of data that looks like the following:

// timestep,x_position,y_position
0,4,7
0,2,7
0,9,5
0,6,7
1,2,5
1,4,7
1,9,0
1,6,8

... and

Answer 1

In the case your data is not already sorted by desired criteria, here's the code that might help to group the data:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
$ cat data_shuffled.txt
0,2,7
1,4,7
0,4,7
1,9,0
1,2,5
0,6,7
1,6,8
0,9,5
"""
from itertools   import groupby
from operator    import itemgetter

# load the data and make sure it is sorted by the first column
sortby_key = itemgetter(0)
data = sorted((map(int, line.split(',')) for line in open('data_shuffled.txt')),
              key=sortby_key)

# group by the first column
grouped_data = []
for key, group in groupby(data, key=sortby_key):
    assert key == len(grouped_data) # assume the first column is 0,1, ...
    grouped_data.append([trio[1:] for trio in group])

# print the data
for i, pairs in enumerate(grouped_data):
    print i, pairs

Output:

0 [[2, 7], [4, 7], [6, 7], [9, 5]]
1 [[4, 7], [9, 0], [2, 5], [6, 8]]