Question

I have an output (a list) of items, like such:

Root
  Branch1
    LeafA
    LeafB
  Branch2
    LeafC
      LeafZ
    LeafD

They are all two-space delimited.
I want build a logical representation of this list without the leading spaces, and retain the parent-child relationshiop.

A final possible result:

aDict = {
    'Root': null,
    'Branch1': 'Root',
    'LeafA': 'Branch1',
... so on and so forth
}

Ultimately, I want to iterate through the dictionary and retrieve the Key and parent, as well as another value from another dict based on Key.

Answer 1

Try this:

tree = """Root
  Branch1
    LeafA
    LeafB
  Branch2
    LeafC
      LeafZ
    LeafD"""

aDict = {}
iDict = {}
for line in tree.split("\n"):
    key = line.lstrip(" ")
    indent = (len(line) - len(key)) / 2
    if indent == 0:
        aDict[key] = None
    else:
        aDict[key] = iDict[indent - 1]
    iDict[indent] = key

print aDict
# {'LeafD': 'Branch2', 'LeafA': 'Branch1', 'Branch2': 'Root', 'LeafC': 'Branch2', 'LeafB': 'Branch1', 'Branch1': 'Root', 'Root': None, 'LeafZ': 'LeafC'}