Create variable number of dictionary with name taken from list in Python

Question

I have a list which grows and shrinks in a for loop. The list looks like following :- . With every element inside list of list i want to associate it to a separate dictionary.

list123 = [[1010,0101],[0111,1000]]

In this case I want to create 4 dictionary with the following name

dict1010 = {}
dict0101 = {}
dict0111 = {}
dict1000 = {}

I tried following loop

for list1 in list123:
    for element in list1:
        dict + str(element) = dict()

This is the error i am getting

SyntaxError: can't assign to literal

Possible duplicate of [How can you dynamically create variables in Python via a while loop?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5036700/how-can-you-dynamically-create-variables-in-python-via-a-while-loop) — Szymon, Jan 14 '16 at 03:22

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 14 '16 at 03:31

while you can dynamically create variables, unless there is an overwhelming need to do that use instead a dictionary of dictionary witch key is the name you want, like this

my_dicts=dict()
for list1 in list123:
    for element in list1:
        my_dicts["dict" + str(element)] = dict()

and to access one of them do for example my_dicts["dict1010"]

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 14 '16 at 03:24

You can uses globals() function to add names to global namespace like this

for list1 in list123:
    for element in list1:
        globals()["dict"+str(element)] = {}

this will add variables with the names you want as if you created them using dictx={} also numbers that begins with 0 won't convert well using str() so you should make your list a list of strings

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 14 '16 at 03:25

First of all, I must say that you shouldn't do this. However, if you really want to, you can use exec.

If you really want to do this, you could use exec:

list123 = [[1010,0101],[0111,1000]]
for list1 in list123:
    for element in list1:
        var = 'dict' + str(element)
        exec(var + ' = dict()')

Create variable number of dictionary with name taken from list in Python

3 Answers3