create a dict of lists from a string
- by Chris Card
I want to convert a string such as 'a=b,a=c,a=d,b=e' into a dict of lists {'a': ['b', 'c', 'd'], 'b': ['e']} in Python 2.6.
My current solution is this:
def merge(d1, d2):
for k, v in d2.items():
if k in d1:
if type(d1[k]) != type(list()):
d1[k] = list(d1[k])
d1[k].append(v)
else:
d1[k] = list(v)
return d1
record = 'a=b,a=c,a=d,b=e'
print reduce(merge, map(dict,[[x.split('=')] for x in record.split(',')]))
which I'm sure is unnecessarily complicated.
Any better solutions?