Is there a way to rename a dictionary key, without reassigning its value to a new name and removing the old name key; and without iterating through dict key/value?

In case of OrderedDict, do the same, while keeping that key’s position.

For a regular dict, you can use:

mydict[new_key] = mydict.pop(old_key)

For an OrderedDict, I think you must build an entirely new one using a comprehension.

>>> OrderedDict(zip('123', 'abc'))
OrderedDict([('1', 'a'), ('2', 'b'), ('3', 'c')])
>>> oldkey, newkey = '2', 'potato'
>>> OrderedDict((newkey if k == oldkey else k, v) for k, v in _.viewitems())
OrderedDict([('1', 'a'), ('potato', 'b'), ('3', 'c')])

Modifying the key itself, as this question seems to be asking, is impractical because dict keys are usually immutable objects such as numbers, strings or tuples. Instead of trying to modify the key, reassigning the value to a new key and removing the old key is how you can achieve the “rename” in python.

best method in 1 line:

>>> d = {'test':[0,1,2]}
>>> d['test2'] = d.pop('test')
>>> d
{'test2': [0, 1, 2]}

Using a check for newkey!=oldkey, this way you can do:

if newkey!=oldkey:  
    dictionary[newkey] = dictionary[oldkey]
    del dictionary[oldkey]

In case of renaming all dictionary keys:

target_dict = {'k1':'v1', 'k2':'v2', 'k3':'v3'}
new_keys = ['k4','k5','k6']

for key,n_key in zip(target_dict.keys(), new_keys):
    target_dict[n_key] = target_dict.pop(key)

You can use this OrderedDict recipe written by Raymond Hettinger and modify it to add a rename method, but this is going to be a O(N) in complexity:

def rename(self,key,new_key):
    ind = self._keys.index(key)  #get the index of old key, O(N) operation
    self._keys[ind] = new_key    #replace old key with new key in self._keys
    self[new_key] = self[key]    #add the new key, this is added at the end of self._keys
    self._keys.pop(-1)           #pop the last item in self._keys

Example:

dic = OrderedDict((("a",1),("b",2),("c",3)))
print dic
dic.rename("a","foo")
dic.rename("b","bar")
dic["d"] = 5
dic.rename("d","spam")
for k,v in  dic.items():
    print k,v

output:

OrderedDict({'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3})
foo 1
bar 2
c 3
spam 5

A few people before me mentioned the .pop trick to delete and create a key in a one-liner.

I personally find the more explicit implementation more readable:

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

The code above returns {'a': 1, 'c': 2}

Other answers are pretty good.But in python3.6, regular dict also has order. So it’s hard to keep key’s position in normal case.

def rename(old_dict,old_name,new_name):
    new_dict = {}
    for key,value in zip(old_dict.keys(),old_dict.values()):
        new_key = key if key != old_name else new_name
        new_dict[new_key] = old_dict[key]
    return new_dict

In Python 3.6 (onwards?) I would go for the following one-liner

test = {'a': 1, 'old': 2, 'c': 3}
old_k = 'old'
new_k = 'new'
new_v = 4  # optional

print(dict((new_k, new_v) if k == old_k else (k, v) for k, v in test.items()))

which produces

{'a': 1, 'new': 4, 'c': 3}

May be worth noting that without the print statement the ipython console/jupyter notebook present the dictionary in an order of their choosing…

I came up with this function which does not mutate the original dictionary. This function also supports list of dictionaries too.

import functools
from typing import Union, Dict, List


def rename_dict_keys(
    data: Union[Dict, List[Dict]], old_key: str, new_key: str
):
    """
    This function renames dictionary keys

    :param data:
    :param old_key:
    :param new_key:
    :return: Union[Dict, List[Dict]]
    """
    if isinstance(data, dict):
        res = {k: v for k, v in data.items() if k != old_key}
        try:
            res[new_key] = data[old_key]
        except KeyError:
            raise KeyError(
                "cannot rename key as old key '%s' is not present in data"
                % old_key
            )
        return res
    elif isinstance(data, list):
        return list(
            map(
                functools.partial(
                    rename_dict_keys, old_key=old_key, new_key=new_key
                ),
                data,
            )
        )
    raise ValueError("expected type List[Dict] or Dict got '%s' for data" % type(data))

I am using @wim ‘s answer above, with dict.pop() when renaming keys, but I found a gotcha. Cycling through the dict to change the keys, without separating the list of old keys completely from the dict instance, resulted in cycling new, changed keys into the loop, and missing some existing keys.

To start with, I did it this way:

for current_key in my_dict:
    new_key = current_key.replace(':','_')
    fixed_metadata[new_key] = fixed_metadata.pop(current_key)

I found that cycling through the dict in this way, the dictionary kept finding keys even when it shouldn’t, i.e., the new keys, the ones I had changed! I needed to separate the instances completely from each other to (a) avoid finding my own changed keys in the for loop, and (b) find some keys that were not being found within the loop for some reason.

I am doing this now:

current_keys = list(my_dict.keys())
for current_key in current_keys:
    and so on...

Converting the my_dict.keys() to a list was necessary to get free of the reference to the changing dict. Just using my_dict.keys() kept me tied to the original instance, with the strange side effects.

In case someone wants to rename all the keys at once providing a list with the new names:

def rename_keys(dict_, new_keys):
    """
     new_keys: type List(), must match length of dict_
    """

    # dict_ = {oldK: value}
    # d1={oldK:newK,} maps old keys to the new ones:  
    d1 = dict( zip( list(dict_.keys()), new_keys) )

          # d1{oldK} == new_key 
    return {d1[oldK]: value for oldK, value in dict_.items()}

@helloswift123 I like your function. Here is a modification to rename multiple keys in a single call:

def rename(d, keymap):
    """
    :param d: old dict
    :type d: dict
    :param keymap: [{:keys from-keys :values to-keys} keymap]
    :returns: new dict
    :rtype: dict
    """
    new_dict = {}
    for key, value in zip(d.keys(), d.values()):
        new_key = keymap.get(key, key)
        new_dict[new_key] = d[key]
    return new_dict

Suppose you want to rename key k3 to k4:

temp_dict = {'k1':'v1', 'k2':'v2', 'k3':'v3'}
temp_dict['k4']= temp_dict.pop('k3')