How to avoid "RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration" error?

I have checked all of the other questions with the same error yet found no helpful solution =/

I have a dictionary of lists:

d = {'a': [1], 'b': [1, 2], 'c': [], 'd':[]}

in which some of the values are empty. At the end of creating these lists, I want to remove these empty lists before returning my dictionary. Current I am attempting to do this as follows:

for i in d:
    if not d[i]:
        d.pop(i)

however, this is giving me the runtime error. I am aware that you cannot add/remove elements in a dictionary while iterating through it...what would be a way around this then?

Solution 1:

In Python 3.x and 2.x you can use use list to force a copy of the keys to be made:

for i in list(d):

In Python 2.x calling keys made a copy of the keys that you could iterate over while modifying the dict:

for i in d.keys():

But note that in Python 3.x this second method doesn't help with your error because keys returns an a view object instead of copynig the keys into a list.

Solution 2:

You only need to use "copy":

On that's way you iterate over the original dictionary fields and on the fly can change the desired dict (d dict). It's work on each python version, so it's more clear.

In [1]: d = {'a': [1], 'b': [1, 2], 'c': [], 'd':[]}

In [2]: for i in d.copy():
   ...:     if not d[i]:
   ...:         d.pop(i)
   ...:         

In [3]: d
Out[3]: {'a': [1], 'b': [1, 2]}

Solution 3:

Just use dictionary comprehension to copy the relevant items into a new dict

>>> d
{'a': [1], 'c': [], 'b': [1, 2], 'd': []}
>>> d = { k : v for k,v in d.iteritems() if v}
>>> d
{'a': [1], 'b': [1, 2]}

For this in Python 3

>>> d
{'a': [1], 'c': [], 'b': [1, 2], 'd': []}
>>> d = { k : v for k,v in d.items() if v}
>>> d
{'a': [1], 'b': [1, 2]}

Solution 4:

This worked for me:

dict = {1: 'a', 2: '', 3: 'b', 4: '', 5: '', 6: 'c'}
for key, value in list(dict.items()):
    if (value == ''):
        del dict[key]
print(dict)
# dict = {1: 'a', 3: 'b', 6: 'c'}  

Casting the dictionary items to list creates a list of its items, so you can iterate over it and avoid the RuntimeError.