How to get more than one value at a time from a dictionary?

Asked Dec 17 '21 at 16:02

Active Dec 17 '21 at 16:06

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I'm trying to get a subset of values from a Python dictionary but I am wondering if there is a quick approach. Imagine that I have this:

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

and I want to get the values for both the a and b simultaneously as a list. I have tried the following methods and every one of them has raised an error.

my_dict['a', 'b']  # KeyError
my_dict[['a', 'b']]  # TypeError (unhashable type: 'list')
my_dict[('a','b')]  # KeyError

I have also tried the .get method, but it didn't work either. Now, I am aware that I can generate a list comprehension that gives me the answer:

subset = [my_dict[key] for key in ["a","b"]]

but I was wondering if there is an easier / shorter way of doing it. Passing a list of keys as an index to a dictionary and getting the corresponding list of values with dictionary[subset_of_keys] --> [subset_of_values] would make sense.

edited Dec 17 '21 at 16:06

martineau

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asked Dec 17 '21 at 16:02

SteP

would something like `list(my_dict.values())[:2]` work? – rv.kvetch Dec 17 '21 at 16:04
if you want to avoid a list comprehension, you could also try `[my_dict['a']] + [my_dict['b']]`, though it's not much better. – rv.kvetch Dec 17 '21 at 16:06

How to get more than one value at a time from a dictionary?

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