Dictionary Objects

type PyDictObject

This subtype of PyObject represents a Python dictionary object.

PyTypeObject PyDict_Type

Part of the Stable ABI.

This instance of PyTypeObject represents the Python dictionary type. This is the same object as dict in the Python layer.

int PyDict_Check(PyObject *p)

Return true if p is a dict object or an instance of a subtype of the dict type. This function always succeeds.

int PyDict_CheckExact(PyObject *p)

Return true if p is a dict object, but not an instance of a subtype of the dict type. This function always succeeds.

PyObject *PyDict_New()

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a new empty dictionary, or NULL on failure.

PyObject *PyDictProxy_New(PyObject *mapping)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a types.MappingProxyType object for a mapping which enforces read-only behavior. This is normally used to create a view to prevent modification of the dictionary for non-dynamic class types.

void PyDict_Clear(PyObject *p)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Empty an existing dictionary of all key-value pairs.

int PyDict_Contains(PyObject *p, PyObject *key)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Determine if dictionary p contains key. If an item in p is matches key, return 1, otherwise return 0. On error, return -1. This is equivalent to the Python expression key in p.

PyObject *PyDict_Copy(PyObject *p)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a new dictionary that contains the same key-value pairs as p.

int PyDict_SetItem(PyObject *p, PyObject *key, PyObject *val)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Insert val into the dictionary p with a key of key. key must be hashable; if it isn’t, TypeError will be raised. Return 0 on success or -1 on failure. This function does not steal a reference to val.

int PyDict_SetItemString(PyObject *p, const char *key, PyObject *val)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Insert val into the dictionary p using key as a key. key should be a const char*. The key object is created using PyUnicode_FromString(key). Return 0 on success or -1 on failure. This function does not steal a reference to val.

int PyDict_DelItem(PyObject *p, PyObject *key)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Remove the entry in dictionary p with key key. key must be hashable; if it isn’t, TypeError is raised. If key is not in the dictionary, KeyError is raised. Return 0 on success or -1 on failure.

int PyDict_DelItemString(PyObject *p, const char *key)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Remove the entry in dictionary p which has a key specified by the string key. If key is not in the dictionary, KeyError is raised. Return 0 on success or -1 on failure.

PyObject *PyDict_GetItem(PyObject *p, PyObject *key)

Return value: Borrowed reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the object from dictionary p which has a key key. Return NULL if the key key is not present, but without setting an exception.

Note that exceptions which occur while calling __hash__() and __eq__() methods will get suppressed. To get error reporting use PyDict_GetItemWithError() instead.

Changed in version 3.10: Calling this API without GIL held had been allowed for historical reason. It is no longer allowed.

PyObject *PyDict_GetItemWithError(PyObject *p, PyObject *key)

Return value: Borrowed reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Variant of PyDict_GetItem() that does not suppress exceptions. Return NULL with an exception set if an exception occurred. Return NULL without an exception set if the key wasn’t present.

PyObject *PyDict_GetItemString(PyObject *p, const char *key)

Return value: Borrowed reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

This is the same as PyDict_GetItem(), but key is specified as a const char*, rather than a PyObject*.

Note that exceptions which occur while calling __hash__() and __eq__() methods and creating a temporary string object will get suppressed. To get error reporting use PyDict_GetItemWithError() instead.

PyObject *PyDict_SetDefault(PyObject *p, PyObject *key, PyObject *defaultobj)

Return value: Borrowed reference.

This is the same as the Python-level dict.setdefault(). If present, it returns the value corresponding to key from the dictionary p. If the key is not in the dict, it is inserted with value defaultobj and defaultobj is returned. This function evaluates the hash function of key only once, instead of evaluating it independently for the lookup and the insertion.

New in version 3.4.

PyObject *PyDict_Items(PyObject *p)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a PyListObject containing all the items from the dictionary.

PyObject *PyDict_Keys(PyObject *p)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a PyListObject containing all the keys from the dictionary.

PyObject *PyDict_Values(PyObject *p)

Return value: New reference. Part of the Stable ABI.

Return a PyListObject containing all the values from the dictionary p.

Py_ssize_t PyDict_Size(PyObject *p)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Return the number of items in the dictionary. This is equivalent to len(p) on a dictionary.

int PyDict_Next(PyObject *p, Py_ssize_t *ppos, PyObject **pkey, PyObject **pvalue)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Iterate over all key-value pairs in the dictionary p. The Py_ssize_t referred to by ppos must be initialized to 0 prior to the first call to this function to start the iteration; the function returns true for each pair in the dictionary, and false once all pairs have been reported. The parameters pkey and pvalue should either point to PyObject* variables that will be filled in with each key and value, respectively, or may be NULL. Any references returned through them are borrowed. ppos should not be altered during iteration. Its value represents offsets within the internal dictionary structure, and since the structure is sparse, the offsets are not consecutive.

For example:

PyObject *key, *value;
Py_ssize_t pos = 0;

while (PyDict_Next(self->dict, &pos, &key, &value)) {
    /* do something interesting with the values... */
    ...
}

The dictionary p should not be mutated during iteration. It is safe to modify the values of the keys as you iterate over the dictionary, but only so long as the set of keys does not change. For example:

PyObject *key, *value;
Py_ssize_t pos = 0;

while (PyDict_Next(self->dict, &pos, &key, &value)) {
    long i = PyLong_AsLong(value);
    if (i == -1 && PyErr_Occurred()) {
        return -1;
    }
    PyObject *o = PyLong_FromLong(i + 1);
    if (o == NULL)
        return -1;
    if (PyDict_SetItem(self->dict, key, o) < 0) {
        Py_DECREF(o);
        return -1;
    }
    Py_DECREF(o);
}

int PyDict_Merge(PyObject *a, PyObject *b, int override)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Iterate over mapping object b adding key-value pairs to dictionary a. b may be a dictionary, or any object supporting PyMapping_Keys() and PyObject_GetItem(). If override is true, existing pairs in a will be replaced if a matching key is found in b, otherwise pairs will only be added if there is not a matching key in a. Return 0 on success or -1 if an exception was raised.

int PyDict_Update(PyObject *a, PyObject *b)

Part of the Stable ABI.

This is the same as PyDict_Merge(a, b, 1) in C, and is similar to a.update(b) in Python except that PyDict_Update() doesn’t fall back to the iterating over a sequence of key value pairs if the second argument has no “keys” attribute. Return 0 on success or -1 if an exception was raised.

int PyDict_MergeFromSeq2(PyObject *a, PyObject *seq2, int override)

Part of the Stable ABI.

Update or merge into dictionary a, from the key-value pairs in seq2. seq2 must be an iterable object producing iterable objects of length 2, viewed as key-value pairs. In case of duplicate keys, the last wins if override is true, else the first wins. Return 0 on success or -1 if an exception was raised. Equivalent Python (except for the return value):

def PyDict_MergeFromSeq2(a, seq2, override):
    for key, value in seq2:
        if override or key not in a:
            a[key] = value