Question

I’m new to python so this is probably a dumb question. I’m sure the answer is in the docs or another thread on stack overflow, but I could not find it.

I have a list: dict_list = ['first_dict', 'second_dict', 'third_dict']

I need a way create a dictionary for each entry in this list and then reference it later using its list index. So, by referencing dict_list[0], I want to be able to create a new dictionary first_dict = {}.

Then, I want to be able to reference that dictionary again later by using dict_list[0], then assign keys and values to first_dict.

This dict_list will contain anywhere from 1 to 1000 entries.

Answer 1

What do you need the names for? The answer is, you don’t. When you start thinking about programmatically assigning a bunch of variable names, especially if those names have numbers in them, you are almost always better off just making a list or some other container.

dict_list = [{} for x in xrange(3)]

Now dict_list[0] is one dictionary, dict_list[1] is another, and so on. This makes them easy to iterate over and access without hackery like globals() or eval().