keys and values lining up

[Guido van Rossum]

Michael Haggerty <mhagger at blizzard.harvard.edu> writes:

> There's always
> 
>     >>> d = {'key1' : 'val1', 'key2' : 'val2', 'key3' : 'val3'}
>     >>> apply(map, [None] + d.items())
>     [('key1', 'key2', 'key3'), ('val1', 'val2', 'val3')]
> 
> if you have to go the items() route.

I don't know how well that will work for a really large dictionary,
because all arguments get pushed on the stack (not the C stack, but
still...).

But it's a really cool trick (by which I meant I hadn't tought of it
:-).  Might be worth noting in the Python book of idioms.

Of course, if you have NumPy, there's always

	keys, values = transpose(d.items())

which probably beats everything else.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)