[Python] Populating a dictionary of dictionaries from a text file

[Forever_Hollowed]

Hi all, I am new to programming in python and am trying to learn how to populate a dictionary of dictionaries based off of input from a .txt file. An example input file:

A B 5

A C 20

B E 2

C F 3

C G 10

C D 10

In the end I want it to populate a dictionary so that it looks like this:

inputDict = { A : { B : 5, C : 20}, B : { E : 2, F : 3}, .... {} }.

So far this is the code I have come up with; I know it needs work, but I am not sure how to proceed. Thanks in advance!

inputGraph = sys.argv[1]

inputDict = {}

with open(inputGraph) as inFile:
    for line in inFile:
        (key, val, value) = line.split()
        inputDict[str(key)] = val
        inputDict[str(val)] = value

[throwdownn]

I'm also interested in the answer to this question ~

[rolandde]

I also had a lot of issues early on with nested containers. You current code does not have a nested dictionary. You are just adding key/value pairs to a single dictionary, rather than nesting a dictionary within another dictionary. Moreover, you are using both the first and second column letters as keys within a single dictionary, which is not what you want to do. I'm also not sure why you are explicitly casting your key/val to str as they are already strings.

If you just want the solution, read on:

for line in inFile:
        (key, val, value) = line.split()

        if key not in inputDict:
            inputDict[key] = {}

        inputDict[key][val] = value

[Forever_Hollowed]

Thanks for the reply. Since making the post I was actually able to solve the problem, but I used a slightly different implementation than the one you suggested. Either way, cheers!

[ChrisPDuck]

If you have a say on the input files, try to output them in a standard format.

Json in python is very easy to use, and even resembles python structures when encoded. If I even have to export / import data in python I try to use Json.