Question

I am working on a program to delete blank values from lists inside dictionaries, however if the entire value consists of a single array that holds only a single space, I need to delete the element containing the single space.

def CleanWhiteSpace(theDict) :
    stuff=[]
    for key2 in theDict.keys():
        for value2 in theDict.values(): 
            if value2 == [' ']:
                print key2
                del theDict[key2]
                print "hi"

    print theDict
    for key,value in theDict.iteritems():
        for d in value:
            print value
            if d != ' ':
                    stuff.append(d)    
            theDict[key]=stuff
        stuff=[]

    return theDict
print CleanWhiteSpace({'a':['1','2'],'b':['3',' '],'c':[' ']})

I only want this to delete key c.

Answer 1

For each key, you should only look at a single value, rather than looping over theDict.values().

def CleanWhiteSpace(theDict) :
    stuff=[]
    for key2 in theDict.keys():  # this is the line I changed
        if theDict[key2] == [' ']:
            print key2
            del theDict[key2]
            print "hi"

    print theDict
    for key, value in theDict.iteritems():
        for d in value:
            print value
            if d != ' ':
                    stuff.append(d)
            theDict[key]=stuff
        stuff=[]

    return theDict
print CleanWhiteSpace({'a':['1','2'],'b':['3',' '],'c':[' ']})