Question

I have two lists like

x = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd'] and
y = [1, 2, 3, 4] 

I have to create a dict from these two lists so that result is

{
 'a': 1,
 'b': 2,
 'c': 3,
 'd': 4
}

I do it using the following

dict(zip(x, y))  

Is there a better and fast/efficient way of doing it?
I have to perform this operation on [m, b]illion of times and on different lists

Thank you

Answer 1

Per Praveen Gollakota’s comment, the original method will work fine. In Python 2.x, you can also use the izip function in the itertools module. Either of these methods will work:

import itertools

x = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
y = [1, 2, 3, 4]

method1 = dict(zip(x, y))
method2 = itertools.izip(x, y)

In Python 3.x, zip returns an iterator by default, so this method will work perfectly:

x = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
y = [1, 2, 3, 4]

method1 = dict(zip(x, y))