how to pop right most(lowest value) item from dictionary?

Question

So let's say I have the following dictionary:

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

So I want to pop (or any other method, that remove and return) 'd' because it is the lowest Value and the right most item (in case 2 keys have the same value), values will always be ints.

I tried:

dic.popItem()

But I'm just getting a random item back, any ideas?

Also tried:

temp = min(dic.values)
del dic[temp]

But again, it's not working!

The rightmost-ness of `d` is lost as soon as it is inserted into the dictionar. The best you can do is remove _one of_ the lowest-value entries. — Robᵩ, Jan 02 '14 at 17:09

Daniel Roseman · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-02T17:22:43.177

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There's no such thing as the right-most item, because dictionaries are unordered.

You can delete one of the lowest-value items like this:

item = min(dic, key=dic.get)
del dic[item]

edited Jan 02 '14 at 17:22

answered Jan 02 '14 at 17:09

Daniel Roseman

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`item = min(dic, key=dic.__getitem__)` might be a touch faster – inspectorG4dget Jan 02 '14 at 17:20
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`key=dic.get` even better – wim Jan 02 '14 at 17:20
Thanks for that @wim, that's really nice. Updated. – Daniel Roseman Jan 02 '14 at 17:22
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how about `dic.pop(min(dic, key=dic.get))` – wim Jan 02 '14 at 17:24
If i am using Counter(), do i have a better way to do it? – user2918984 Jan 02 '14 at 17:53
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Counter just works the same way as a dictionary for item access and deletion. – Daniel Roseman Jan 02 '14 at 18:02

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

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You need an ordereddict to get a consistent result.

See this post:

Sort a Python dictionary by value

edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Community

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answered Jan 02 '14 at 17:09

NL - Apologize to Monica

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how to pop right most(lowest value) item from dictionary?

2 Answers2