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In bash I can use mkdir's -p flag to create a directory that is several directories deep without having to check for the existence of all of its ancestor directories, and create them if needed; it will create any nonexistent parent directories along the way. rm -rf a; mkdir -p a/b/c/d/e/f will create a, and then b inside it, and then c inside b, and so on, all the way to f.

In Python I want to be able to do something similar with dictionaries:

nested_dict = dict()
nested_dict["a"]["b"]["c"]["d"]["e"] = "f"

collections.defaultdict will give me one level of 'forgiveness' if a key does not exist (e.g. if not "a" in nested_dict.keys(): nested_dict["a"]["b"] = "something" will not raise an Exception if nested_dict is a defaultdict(dict) but not an arbitrarily deep level. Is there currently a nice way of doing such a thing in Python?

PistoletPierre
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1 Answers1

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You can do this by creating a lambda that gives a new defaultdict in the constructor.

create_dict = lambda : nested_dict
nested_dict = default_dict(create_dict)
iHowell
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