I want to change the key of an entry in a Python dictionary.

Is there a straightforward way to do this?

Easily done in 2 steps:

dictionary[new_key] = dictionary[old_key]
del dictionary[old_key]

Or in 1 step:

dictionary[new_key] = dictionary.pop(old_key)

which will raise KeyError if dictionary[old_key] is undefined. Note that this will delete dictionary[old_key].

>>> dictionary = { 1: 'one', 2:'two', 3:'three' }
>>> dictionary['ONE'] = dictionary.pop(1)
>>> dictionary
{2: 'two', 3: 'three', 'ONE': 'one'}
>>> dictionary['ONE'] = dictionary.pop(1)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<input>", line 1, in <module>
KeyError: 1

if you want to change all the keys:

d = {'x':1, 'y':2, 'z':3}
d1 = {'x':'a', 'y':'b', 'z':'c'}

In [10]: dict((d1[key], value) for (key, value) in d.items())
Out[10]: {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}

if you want to change single key: You can go with any of the above suggestion.

pop’n’fresh

>>>a = {1:2, 3:4}
>>>a[5] = a.pop(1)
>>>a
{3: 4, 5: 2}
>>> 

In python 2.7 and higher, you can use dictionary comprehension: This is an example I encountered while reading a CSV using a DictReader. The user had suffixed all the column names with ‘:’

ori_dict = {'key1:' : 1, 'key2:' : 2, 'key3:' : 3}

to get rid of the trailing ‘:’ in the keys:

corrected_dict = { k.replace(':', ''): v for k, v in ori_dict.items() }

Since keys are what dictionaries use to lookup values, you can’t really change them. The closest thing you can do is to save the value associated with the old key, delete it, then add a new entry with the replacement key and the saved value. Several of the other answers illustrate different ways this can be accomplished.

If you have a complex dict, it means there is a dict or list within the dict:

myDict = {1:"one",2:{3:"three",4:"four"}}
myDict[2][5] = myDict[2].pop(4)
print myDict

Output
{1: 'one', 2: {3: 'three', 5: 'four'}}

No direct way to do this, but you can delete-then-assign

d = {1:2,3:4}

d[newKey] = d[1]
del d[1]

or do mass key changes:

d = dict((changeKey(k), v) for k, v in d.items())

To convert all the keys in the dictionary

Suppose this is your dictionary:

>>> sample = {'person-id': '3', 'person-name': 'Bob'}

To convert all the dashes to underscores in the sample dictionary key:

>>> sample = {key.replace('-', '_'): sample.pop(key) for key in sample.keys()}
>>> sample
>>> {'person_id': '3', 'person_name': 'Bob'}

d = {1:2,3:4}

suppose that we want to change the keys to the list elements p=[‘a’ , ‘b’]. the following code will do:

d=dict(zip(p,list(d.values()))) 

and we get

{'a': 2, 'b': 4}

You can associate the same value with many keys, or just remove a key and re-add a new key with the same value.

For example, if you have keys->values:

red->1
blue->2
green->4

there’s no reason you can’t add purple->2 or remove red->1 and add orange->1

In case of changing all the keys at once. Here I am stemming the keys.

a = {'making' : 1, 'jumping' : 2, 'climbing' : 1, 'running' : 2}
b = {ps.stem(w) : a[w] for w in a.keys()}
print(b)
>>> {'climb': 1, 'jump': 2, 'make': 1, 'run': 2} #output

I haven’t seen this exact answer:

dict['key'] = value

You can even do this to object attributes. Make them into a dictionary by doing this:

dict = vars(obj)

Then you can manipulate the object attributes like you would a dictionary:

dict['attribute'] = value