Question

How can I code to read the first line from a file and put it as a key value of a dictionary and keep reading next values in a iterative manner and put them as the values to the particular key they fall into in the file.
Like example:

Item Quality Cost Place

Ball     1        $12    TX
Umbrella 5        $35    NY
sweater  89       $100   LA

So here, the representation is my file. When I read, I want the dictionary to be created as in the things in bold go as keys and when i keep reading lines below that, I would have them going as multiple values in the respective keys.

thanks

Answer 1

You can’t have “multiple values” for a given key, but you can of course have one value per key that’s a list.

For example (Python 2.6 or better — simply because I use the next function for generality rather than methods such as readline, but you can of course tweak that!):

def makedictwithlists(f):
    keys = next(f).split()
    d = {}
    for k in keys: d[k] = []
    for line in f:
        for k, v in zip(keys, line.split()):
            d[k].append(v)
    return d