A detailed guide to adding dictionaries to lists in Python.

This tutorial will provide you with an understanding of how to use dictionaries and lists in Python, the key differences between them, how they can be used together and when one should prefer over ano …

This tutorial will provide you with an understanding of how to use dictionaries and lists in Python, the key differences between them, how they can be used together and when one should prefer over another.

Introduction

Lists in Python are ordered collection of items and dictionaries are unordered collections of (key, value) pairs where keys must be unique. We can combine both by adding a dictionary to a list.

list_of_dict = [{'name': 'John', 'age': 30}, {'name': 'Mike', 'age': 25}]
print(list_of_dict)
# output: [{'name': 'John', 'age': 30}, {'name': 'Mike', 'age': 25}]

In this example, each dictionary is an item in the list. Each key-value pair in the dictionary represents a record of information. The entire list can be seen as a set of records.

However, we need to note that unlike lists which are dynamic and can grow or shrink in size at runtime, dictionaries have fixed size and cannot be resized after they’re created.

When Should You Use Lists and Dictionaries Together?

The use of lists and dictionaries together depends on the specific requirements of your project. If you need to store complex or structured data where order doesn’t matter but each element has a unique key-value pair, then using a dictionary with list would be most suitable.

For example, if you are creating an application for a social network and users have profiles containing information like name, age, hobbies etc., then you should use this combination to store them because each user’s profile is considered unique and has many different attributes.

If the order in which data is added matters and it doesn’t matter how many times an item appears (like a set), you would want to use a list instead of a dictionary because dictionaries do not allow duplicate keys, but lists do.

Conclusion

In Python, combining lists with dictionaries can offer a powerful way to structure and store data in complex ways. The choice between the two depends on your specific need for order, duplicity and efficient key-value pairing.