We Keep Coding

The following code is gives the output as i = 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 for some reason. Can anyone explain how this is happening? [duplicate]

Let's say we have a Python dictionary d, and we're iterating over it like so:
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)] # remove some item
d[g(k)] = v # add a new item
(f and g are just some black-box transformations.)
In other words, we try to add/remove items to d while iterating over it using iteritems.
Is this well defined? Could you provide some references to support your answer?
See also How to avoid "RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration" error? for the separate question of how to avoid the problem.

Alex Martelli weighs in on this here.
It may not be safe to change the container (e.g. dict) while looping over the container.
So del d[f(k)] may not be safe. As you know, the workaround is to use d.copy().items() (to loop over an independent copy of the container) instead of d.iteritems() or d.items() (which use the same underlying container).
It is okay to modify the value at an existing index of the dict, but inserting values at new indices (e.g. d[g(k)] = v) may not work.

It is explicitly mentioned on the Python doc page (for Python 2.7) that
Using iteritems() while adding or deleting entries in the dictionary may raise a RuntimeError or fail to iterate over all entries.
Similarly for Python 3.
The same holds for iter(d), d.iterkeys() and d.itervalues(), and I'll go as far as saying that it does for for k, v in d.items(): (I can't remember exactly what for does, but I would not be surprised if the implementation called iter(d)).

You cannot do that, at least with d.iteritems(). I tried it, and Python fails with
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
If you instead use d.items(), then it works.
In Python 3, d.items() is a view into the dictionary, like d.iteritems() in Python 2. To do this in Python 3, instead use d.copy().items(). This will similarly allow us to iterate over a copy of the dictionary in order to avoid modifying the data structure we are iterating over.

I have a large dictionary containing Numpy arrays, so the dict.copy().keys() thing suggested by #murgatroid99 was not feasible (though it worked). Instead, I just converted the keys_view to a list and it worked fine (in Python 3.4):
for item in list(dict_d.keys()):
temp = dict_d.pop(item)
dict_d['some_key'] = 1 # Some value
I realize this doesn't dive into the philosophical realm of Python's inner workings like the answers above, but it does provide a practical solution to the stated problem.

The following code shows that this is not well defined:
def f(x):
return x
def g(x):
return x+1
def h(x):
return x+10
try:
d = {1:"a", 2:"b", 3:"c"}
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)]
d[g(k)] = v+"x"
print d
except Exception as e:
print "Exception:", e
try:
d = {1:"a", 2:"b", 3:"c"}
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)]
d[h(k)] = v+"x"
print d
except Exception as e:
print "Exception:", e
The first example calls g(k), and throws an exception (dictionary changed size during iteration).
The second example calls h(k) and throws no exception, but outputs:
{21: 'axx', 22: 'bxx', 23: 'cxx'}
Which, looking at the code, seems wrong - I would have expected something like:
{11: 'ax', 12: 'bx', 13: 'cx'}

Python 3 you should just:
prefix = 'item_'
t = {'f1': 'ffw', 'f2': 'fca'}
t2 = dict()
for k,v in t.items():
t2[k] = prefix + v
or use:
t2 = t1.copy()
You should never modify original dictionary, it leads to confusion as well as potential bugs or RunTimeErrors. Unless you just append to the dictionary with new key names.

This question asks about using an iterator (and funny enough, that Python 2 .iteritems iterator is no longer supported in Python 3) to delete or add items, and it must have a No as its only right answer as you can find it in the accepted answer. Yet: most of the searchers try to find a solution, they will not care how this is done technically, be it an iterator or a recursion, and there is a solution for the problem:
You cannot loop-change a dict without using an additional (recursive) function.
This question should therefore be linked to a question that has a working solution:
How can I remove a key:value pair wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "delete")
Also helpful as it shows how to change the items of a dict on the run: How can I replace a key:value pair by its value wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "replace").
By the same recursive methods, you will also able to add items as the question asks for as well.
Since my request to link this question was declined, here is a copy of the solution that can delete items from a dict. See How can I remove a key:value pair wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "delete") for examples / credits / notes.
import copy
def find_remove(this_dict, target_key, bln_overwrite_dict=False):
if not bln_overwrite_dict:
this_dict = copy.deepcopy(this_dict)
for key in this_dict:
# if the current value is a dict, dive into it
if isinstance(this_dict[key], dict):
if target_key in this_dict[key]:
this_dict[key].pop(target_key)
this_dict[key] = find_remove(this_dict[key], target_key)
return this_dict
dict_nested_new = find_remove(nested_dict, "sub_key2a")
The trick
The trick is to find out in advance whether a target_key is among the next children (= this_dict[key] = the values of the current dict iteration) before you reach the child level recursively. Only then you can still delete a key:value pair of the child level while iterating over a dictionary. Once you have reached the same level as the key to be deleted and then try to delete it from there, you would get the error:
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
The recursive solution makes any change only on the next values' sub-level and therefore avoids the error.

I got the same problem and I used following procedure to solve this issue.
Python List can be iterate even if you modify during iterating over it.
so for following code it will print 1's infinitely.
for i in list:
list.append(1)
print 1
So using list and dict collaboratively you can solve this problem.
d_list=[]
d_dict = {}
for k in d_list:
if d_dict[k] is not -1:
d_dict[f(k)] = -1 # rather than deleting it mark it with -1 or other value to specify that it will be not considered further(deleted)
d_dict[g(k)] = v # add a new item
d_list.append(g(k))

Today I had a similar use-case, but instead of simply materializing the keys on the dictionary at the beginning of the loop, I wanted changes to the dict to affect the iteration of the dict, which was an ordered dict.
I ended up building the following routine, which can also be found in jaraco.itertools:
def _mutable_iter(dict):
"""
Iterate over items in the dict, yielding the first one, but allowing
it to be mutated during the process.
>>> d = dict(a=1)
>>> it = _mutable_iter(d)
>>> next(it)
('a', 1)
>>> d
{}
>>> d.update(b=2)
>>> list(it)
[('b', 2)]
"""
while dict:
prev_key = next(iter(dict))
yield prev_key, dict.pop(prev_key)
The docstring illustrates the usage. This function could be used in place of d.iteritems() above to have the desired effect.

How add() on set can work in such dictionary? [duplicate]

The addition of collections.defaultdict in Python 2.5 greatly reduced the need for dict's setdefault method. This question is for our collective education:
What is setdefault still useful for, today in Python 2.6/2.7?
What popular use cases of setdefault were superseded with collections.defaultdict?

You could say defaultdict is useful for settings defaults before filling the dict and setdefault is useful for setting defaults while or after filling the dict.
Probably the most common use case: Grouping items (in unsorted data, else use itertools.groupby)
# really verbose
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
if key in new:
new[key].append( value )
else:
new[key] = [value]
# easy with setdefault
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
group = new.setdefault(key, []) # key might exist already
group.append( value )
# even simpler with defaultdict
from collections import defaultdict
new = defaultdict(list)
for (key, value) in data:
new[key].append( value ) # all keys have a default already
Sometimes you want to make sure that specific keys exist after creating a dict. defaultdict doesn't work in this case, because it only creates keys on explicit access. Think you use something HTTP-ish with many headers -- some are optional, but you want defaults for them:
headers = parse_headers( msg ) # parse the message, get a dict
# now add all the optional headers
for headername, defaultvalue in optional_headers:
headers.setdefault( headername, defaultvalue )

I commonly use setdefault for keyword argument dicts, such as in this function:
def notify(self, level, *pargs, **kwargs):
kwargs.setdefault("persist", level >= DANGER)
self.__defcon.set(level, **kwargs)
try:
kwargs.setdefault("name", self.client.player_entity().name)
except pytibia.PlayerEntityNotFound:
pass
return _notify(level, *pargs, **kwargs)
It's great for tweaking arguments in wrappers around functions that take keyword arguments.

defaultdict is great when the default value is static, like a new list, but not so much if it's dynamic.
For example, I need a dictionary to map strings to unique ints. defaultdict(int) will always use 0 for the default value. Likewise, defaultdict(intGen()) always produces 1.
Instead, I used a regular dict:
nextID = intGen()
myDict = {}
for lots of complicated stuff:
#stuff that generates unpredictable, possibly already seen str
strID = myDict.setdefault(myStr, nextID())
Note that dict.get(key, nextID()) is insufficient because I need to be able to refer to these values later as well.
intGen is a tiny class I build that automatically increments an int and returns its value:
class intGen:
def __init__(self):
self.i = 0
def __call__(self):
self.i += 1
return self.i
If someone has a way to do this with defaultdict I'd love to see it.

As most answers state setdefault or defaultdict would let you set a default value when a key doesn't exist. However, I would like to point out a small caveat with regard to the use cases of setdefault. When the Python interpreter executes setdefaultit will always evaluate the second argument to the function even if the key exists in the dictionary. For example:
In: d = {1:5, 2:6}
In: d
Out: {1: 5, 2: 6}
In: d.setdefault(2, 0)
Out: 6
In: d.setdefault(2, print('test'))
test
Out: 6
As you can see, print was also executed even though 2 already existed in the dictionary. This becomes particularly important if you are planning to use setdefault for example for an optimization like memoization. If you add a recursive function call as the second argument to setdefault, you wouldn't get any performance out of it as Python would always be calling the function recursively.
Since memoization was mentioned, a better alternative is to use functools.lru_cache decorator if you consider enhancing a function with memoization. lru_cache handles the caching requirements for a recursive function better.

I use setdefault() when I want a default value in an OrderedDict. There isn't a standard Python collection that does both, but there are ways to implement such a collection.

As Muhammad said, there are situations in which you only sometimes wish to set a default value. A great example of this is a data structure which is first populated, then queried.
Consider a trie. When adding a word, if a subnode is needed but not present, it must be created to extend the trie. When querying for the presence of a word, a missing subnode indicates that the word is not present and it should not be created.
A defaultdict cannot do this. Instead, a regular dict with the get and setdefault methods must be used.

Theoretically speaking, setdefault would still be handy if you sometimes want to set a default and sometimes not. In real life, I haven't come across such a use case.
However, an interesting use case comes up from the standard library (Python 2.6, _threadinglocal.py):
>>> mydata = local()
>>> mydata.__dict__
{'number': 42}
>>> mydata.__dict__.setdefault('widgets', [])
[]
>>> mydata.widgets
[]
I would say that using __dict__.setdefault is a pretty useful case.
Edit: As it happens, this is the only example in the standard library and it is in a comment. So may be it is not enough of a case to justify the existence of setdefault. Still, here is an explanation:
Objects store their attributes in the __dict__ attribute. As it happens, the __dict__ attribute is writeable at any time after the object creation. It is also a dictionary not a defaultdict. It is not sensible for objects in the general case to have __dict__ as a defaultdict because that would make each object having all legal identifiers as attributes. So I can't foresee any change to Python objects getting rid of __dict__.setdefault, apart from deleting it altogether if it was deemed not useful.

I rewrote the accepted answer and facile it for the newbies.
#break it down and understand it intuitively.
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
if key not in new:
new[key] = [] # this is core of setdefault equals to new.setdefault(key, [])
new[key].append(value)
else:
new[key].append(value)
# easy with setdefault
new = {}
for (key, value) in data:
group = new.setdefault(key, []) # it is new[key] = []
group.append(value)
# even simpler with defaultdict
new = defaultdict(list)
for (key, value) in data:
new[key].append(value) # all keys have a default value of empty list []
Additionally,I categorized the methods as reference:
dict_methods_11 = {
'views':['keys', 'values', 'items'],
'add':['update','setdefault'],
'remove':['pop', 'popitem','clear'],
'retrieve':['get',],
'copy':['copy','fromkeys'],}

One drawback of defaultdict over dict (dict.setdefault) is that a defaultdict object creates a new item EVERYTIME non existing key is given (eg with ==, print). Also the defaultdict class is generally way less common then the dict class, its more difficult to serialize it IME.
P.S. IMO functions|methods not meant to mutate an object, should not mutate an object.

Here are some examples of setdefault to show its usefulness:
"""
d = {}
# To add a key->value pair, do the following:
d.setdefault(key, []).append(value)
# To retrieve a list of the values for a key
list_of_values = d[key]
# To remove a key->value pair is still easy, if
# you don't mind leaving empty lists behind when
# the last value for a given key is removed:
d[key].remove(value)
# Despite the empty lists, it's still possible to
# test for the existance of values easily:
if d.has_key(key) and d[key]:
pass # d has some values for key
# Note: Each value can exist multiple times!
"""
e = {}
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Toyota')
print e
e.setdefault('Motorcycles', []).append('Yamaha')
print e
e.setdefault('Airplanes', []).append('Boeing')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Honda')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('BMW')
print e
e.setdefault('Cars', []).append('Toyota')
print e
# NOTE: now e['Cars'] == ['Toyota', 'Honda', 'BMW', 'Toyota']
e['Cars'].remove('Toyota')
print e
# NOTE: it's still true that ('Toyota' in e['Cars'])

I use setdefault frequently when, get this, setting a default (!!!) in a dictionary; somewhat commonly the os.environ dictionary:
# Set the venv dir if it isn't already overridden:
os.environ.setdefault('VENV_DIR', '/my/default/path')
Less succinctly, this looks like this:
# Set the venv dir if it isn't already overridden:
if 'VENV_DIR' not in os.environ:
os.environ['VENV_DIR'] = '/my/default/path')
It's worth noting that you can also use the resulting variable:
venv_dir = os.environ.setdefault('VENV_DIR', '/my/default/path')
But that's less necessary than it was before defaultdicts existed.

Another use case that I don't think was mentioned above.
Sometimes you keep a cache dict of objects by their id where primary instance is in the cache and you want to set cache when missing.
return self.objects_by_id.setdefault(obj.id, obj)
That's useful when you always want to keep a single instance per distinct id no matter how you obtain an obj each time. For example when object attributes get updated in memory and saving to storage is deferred.

One very important use-case I just stumbled across: dict.setdefault() is great for multi-threaded code when you only want a single canonical object (as opposed to multiple objects that happen to be equal).
For example, the (Int)Flag Enum in Python 3.6.0 has a bug: if multiple threads are competing for a composite (Int)Flag member, there may end up being more than one:
from enum import IntFlag, auto
import threading
class TestFlag(IntFlag):
one = auto()
two = auto()
three = auto()
four = auto()
five = auto()
six = auto()
seven = auto()
eight = auto()
def __eq__(self, other):
return self is other
def __hash__(self):
return hash(self.value)
seen = set()
class cycle_enum(threading.Thread):
def run(self):
for i in range(256):
seen.add(TestFlag(i))
threads = []
for i in range(8):
threads.append(cycle_enum())
for t in threads:
t.start()
for t in threads:
t.join()
len(seen)
# 272 (should be 256)
The solution is to use setdefault() as the last step of saving the computed composite member -- if another has already been saved then it is used instead of the new one, guaranteeing unique Enum members.

In addition to what have been suggested, setdefault might be useful in situations where you don't want to modify a value that has been already set. For example, when you have duplicate numbers and you want to treat them as one group. In this case, if you encounter a repeated duplicate key which has been already set, you won't update the value of that key. You will keep the first encountered value. As if you are iterating/updating the repeated keys once only.
Here's a code example of recording the index for the keys/elements of a sorted list:
nums = [2,2,2,2,2]
d = {}
for idx, num in enumerate(sorted(nums)):
# This will be updated with the value/index of the of the last repeated key
# d[num] = idx # Result (sorted_indices): [4, 4, 4, 4, 4]
# In the case of setdefault, all encountered repeated keys won't update the key.
# However, only the first encountered key's index will be set
d.setdefault(num,idx) # Result (sorted_indices): [0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
sorted_indices = [d[i] for i in nums]

[Edit] Very wrong! The setdefault would always trigger long_computation, Python being eager.
Expanding on Tuttle's answer. For me the best use case is cache mechanism. Instead of:
if x not in memo:
memo[x]=long_computation(x)
return memo[x]
which consumes 3 lines and 2 or 3 lookups, I would happily write :
return memo.setdefault(x, long_computation(x))

I like the answer given here:
http://stupidpythonideas.blogspot.com/2013/08/defaultdict-vs-setdefault.html
In short, the decision (in non-performance-critical apps) should be made on the basis of how you want to handle lookup of empty keys downstream (viz. KeyError versus default value).

The different use case for setdefault() is when you don't want to overwrite the value of an already set key. defaultdict overwrites, while setdefault() does not. For nested dictionaries it is more often the case that you want to set a default only if the key is not set yet, because you don't want to remove the present sub dictionary. This is when you use setdefault().
Example with defaultdict:
>>> from collection import defaultdict()
>>> foo = defaultdict()
>>> foo['a'] = 4
>>> foo['a'] = 2
>>> print(foo)
defaultdict(None, {'a': 2})
setdefault doesn't overwrite:
>>> bar = dict()
>>> bar.setdefault('a', 4)
>>> bar.setdefault('a', 2)
>>> print(bar)
{'a': 4}

Another usecase for setdefault in CPython is that it is atomic in all cases, whereas defaultdict will not be atomic if you use a default value created from a lambda.
cache = {}
def get_user_roles(user_id):
if user_id in cache:
return cache[user_id]['roles']
cache.setdefault(user_id, {'lock': threading.Lock()})
with cache[user_id]['lock']:
roles = query_roles_from_database(user_id)
cache[user_id]['roles'] = roles
If two threads execute cache.setdefault at the same time, only one of them will be able to create the default value.
If instead you used a defaultdict:
cache = defaultdict(lambda: {'lock': threading.Lock()}
This would result in a race condition. In my example above, the first thread could create a default lock, and the second thread could create another default lock, and then each thread could lock its own default lock, instead of the desired outcome of each thread attempting to lock a single lock.
Conceptually, setdefault basically behaves like this (defaultdict also behaves like this if you use an empty list, empty dict, int, or other default value that is not user python code like a lambda):
gil = threading.Lock()
def setdefault(dict, key, value_func):
with gil:
if key not in dict:
return
value = value_func()
dict[key] = value
Conceptually, defaultdict basically behaves like this (only when using python code like a lambda - this is not true if you use an empty list):
gil = threading.Lock()
def __setitem__(dict, key, value_func):
with gil:
if key not in dict:
return
value = value_func()
with gil:
dict[key] = value

Is there something simple like a set for un-hashable objects?

For hashable objects inside a dict I could easily pair down duplicate values store in a dict using a set. For example:
a = {'test': 1, 'key': 1, 'other': 2}
b = set(a.values())
print(b)
Would display [1,2]
Problem I have is I am using a dict to store mapping between variable keys in __dict__ and the corresponding processing functions that will be passed to an engine to order and process those functions, some of these functions may be fast some may be slower due to accessing an API. The problem is each function may use multiple variable, therefor need multiple mappings in the dict. I'm wondering if there is a way to do this or if I am stuck writing my own solution?
Ended up building a callable class, since caching could speed things up for me:
from collections.abc import Callable
class RemoveDuplicates(Callable):
input_cache = []
output_cache = []
def __call__(self, in_list):
if list in self.input_cache:
idx = self.input_cache.index(in_list)
return self.output_cache[idx]
else:
self.input_cache.append(in_list)
out_list = self._remove_duplicates(in_list)
self.output_cache.append(out_list)
return out_list
def _remove_duplicates(self, src_list):
result = []
for item in src_list:
if item not in result:
result.append(item)
return result

If the objects can be ordered, you can use itertools.groupby to eliminate the duplicates:
>>> a = {'test': 1, 'key': 1, 'other': 2}
>>> b = [k for k, it in itertools.groupby(sorted(a.values()))]
>>> print(b)
[1, 2]

Is there something simple like a set for un-hashable objects
Not in the standard library but you need to look beyond and search for BTree implementation of dictionary. I googled and found few hits where the first one (BTree)seems promising and interesting
Quoting from the wiki
The BTree-based data structures differ from Python dicts in several
fundamental ways. One of the most important is that while dicts
require that keys support hash codes and equality comparison, the
BTree-based structures don’t use hash codes and require a total
ordering on keys.
Off-course its trivial fact that a set can be implemented as a dictionary where the value is unused.

You could (indirectly) use the bisect module to create sorted collection of your values which would greatly speed-up the insertion of new values and value membership testing in general — which together can be utilized to unsure that only unique values get put into it.
In the code below, I've used un-hashable set values for the sake of illustration.
# see http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577197-sortedcollection
from sortedcollection import SortedCollection
a = {'test': {1}, 'key': {1}, 'other': {2}}
sc = SortedCollection()
for value in a.values():
if value not in sc:
sc.insert(value)
print(list(sc)) # --> [{1}, {2}]

How to retrieve from python dict where key is only partially known?

I have a dict that has string-type keys whose exact values I can't know (because they're generated dynamically elsewhere). However, I know that that the key I want contains a particular substring, and that a single key with this substring is definitely in the dict.
What's the best, or "most pythonic" way to retrieve the value for this key?
I thought of two strategies, but both irk me:
for k,v in some_dict.items():
if 'substring' in k:
value = v
break
-- OR --
value = [v for (k,v) in some_dict.items() if 'substring' in k][0]
The first method is bulky and somewhat ugly, while the second is cleaner, but the extra step of indexing into the list comprehension (the [0]) irks me. Is there a better way to express the second version, or a more concise way to write the first?

There is an option to write the second version with the performance attributes of the first one.
Use a generator expression instead of list comprehension:
value = next(v for (k,v) in some_dict.iteritems() if 'substring' in k)
The expression inside the parenthesis will return an iterator which you will then ask to provide the next, i.e. first element. No further elements are processed.

How about this:
value = (v for (k,v) in some_dict.iteritems() if 'substring' in k).next()
It will stop immediately when it finds the first match.
But it still has O(n) complexity, where n is the number of key-value pairs. You need something like a suffix list or a suffix tree to speed up searching.

If there are many keys but the string is easy to reconstruct from the substring, then it can be faster reconstructing it. e.g. often you know the start of the key but not the datestamp that has been appended on. (so you may only have to try 365 dates rather than iterate through millions of keys for example).
It's unlikely to be the case but I thought I would suggest it anyway.
e.g.
>>> names={'bob_k':32,'james_r':443,'sarah_p':12}
>>> firstname='james' #you know the substring james because you have a list of firstnames
>>> for c in "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz":
... name="%s_%s"%(firstname,c)
... if name in names:
... print name
...
james_r

class MyDict(dict):
def __init__(self, *kwargs):
dict.__init__(self, *kwargs)
def __getitem__(self,x):
return next(v for (k,v) in self.iteritems() if x in k)
# Defining several dicos ----------------------------------------------------
some_dict = {'abc4589':4578,'abc7812':798,'kjuy45763':1002}
another_dict = {'boumboum14':'WSZE x478',
'tagada4783':'ocean11',
'maracuna102455':None}
still_another = {12:'jfg',45:'klsjgf'}
# Selecting the dicos whose __getitem__ method will be changed -------------
name,obj = None,None
selected_dicos = [ (name,obj) for (name,obj) in globals().iteritems()
if type(obj)==dict
and all(type(x)==str for x in obj.iterkeys())]
print 'names of selected_dicos ==',[ name for (name,obj) in selected_dicos]
# Transforming the selected dicos in instances of class MyDict -----------
for k,v in selected_dicos:
globals()[k] = MyDict(v)
# Exemple of getting a value ---------------------------------------------
print "some_dict['7812'] ==",some_dict['7812']
result
names of selected_dicos == ['another_dict', 'some_dict']
some_dict['7812'] == 798

I prefer the first version, although I'd use some_dict.iteritems() (if you're on Python 2) because then you don't have to build an entire list of all the items beforehand. Instead you iterate through the dict and break as soon as you're done.
On Python 3, some_dict.items(2) already results in a dictionary view, so that's already a suitable iterator.

Modifying a Python dict while iterating over it

Let's say we have a Python dictionary d, and we're iterating over it like so:
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)] # remove some item
d[g(k)] = v # add a new item
(f and g are just some black-box transformations.)
In other words, we try to add/remove items to d while iterating over it using iteritems.
Is this well defined? Could you provide some references to support your answer?
See also How to avoid "RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration" error? for the separate question of how to avoid the problem.

Alex Martelli weighs in on this here.
It may not be safe to change the container (e.g. dict) while looping over the container.
So del d[f(k)] may not be safe. As you know, the workaround is to use d.copy().items() (to loop over an independent copy of the container) instead of d.iteritems() or d.items() (which use the same underlying container).
It is okay to modify the value at an existing index of the dict, but inserting values at new indices (e.g. d[g(k)] = v) may not work.

It is explicitly mentioned on the Python doc page (for Python 2.7) that
Using iteritems() while adding or deleting entries in the dictionary may raise a RuntimeError or fail to iterate over all entries.
Similarly for Python 3.
The same holds for iter(d), d.iterkeys() and d.itervalues(), and I'll go as far as saying that it does for for k, v in d.items(): (I can't remember exactly what for does, but I would not be surprised if the implementation called iter(d)).

You cannot do that, at least with d.iteritems(). I tried it, and Python fails with
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
If you instead use d.items(), then it works.
In Python 3, d.items() is a view into the dictionary, like d.iteritems() in Python 2. To do this in Python 3, instead use d.copy().items(). This will similarly allow us to iterate over a copy of the dictionary in order to avoid modifying the data structure we are iterating over.

I have a large dictionary containing Numpy arrays, so the dict.copy().keys() thing suggested by #murgatroid99 was not feasible (though it worked). Instead, I just converted the keys_view to a list and it worked fine (in Python 3.4):
for item in list(dict_d.keys()):
temp = dict_d.pop(item)
dict_d['some_key'] = 1 # Some value
I realize this doesn't dive into the philosophical realm of Python's inner workings like the answers above, but it does provide a practical solution to the stated problem.

The following code shows that this is not well defined:
def f(x):
return x
def g(x):
return x+1
def h(x):
return x+10
try:
d = {1:"a", 2:"b", 3:"c"}
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)]
d[g(k)] = v+"x"
print d
except Exception as e:
print "Exception:", e
try:
d = {1:"a", 2:"b", 3:"c"}
for k, v in d.iteritems():
del d[f(k)]
d[h(k)] = v+"x"
print d
except Exception as e:
print "Exception:", e
The first example calls g(k), and throws an exception (dictionary changed size during iteration).
The second example calls h(k) and throws no exception, but outputs:
{21: 'axx', 22: 'bxx', 23: 'cxx'}
Which, looking at the code, seems wrong - I would have expected something like:
{11: 'ax', 12: 'bx', 13: 'cx'}

Python 3 you should just:
prefix = 'item_'
t = {'f1': 'ffw', 'f2': 'fca'}
t2 = dict()
for k,v in t.items():
t2[k] = prefix + v
or use:
t2 = t1.copy()
You should never modify original dictionary, it leads to confusion as well as potential bugs or RunTimeErrors. Unless you just append to the dictionary with new key names.

This question asks about using an iterator (and funny enough, that Python 2 .iteritems iterator is no longer supported in Python 3) to delete or add items, and it must have a No as its only right answer as you can find it in the accepted answer. Yet: most of the searchers try to find a solution, they will not care how this is done technically, be it an iterator or a recursion, and there is a solution for the problem:
You cannot loop-change a dict without using an additional (recursive) function.
This question should therefore be linked to a question that has a working solution:
How can I remove a key:value pair wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "delete")
Also helpful as it shows how to change the items of a dict on the run: How can I replace a key:value pair by its value wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "replace").
By the same recursive methods, you will also able to add items as the question asks for as well.
Since my request to link this question was declined, here is a copy of the solution that can delete items from a dict. See How can I remove a key:value pair wherever the chosen key occurs in a deeply nested dictionary? (= "delete") for examples / credits / notes.
import copy
def find_remove(this_dict, target_key, bln_overwrite_dict=False):
if not bln_overwrite_dict:
this_dict = copy.deepcopy(this_dict)
for key in this_dict:
# if the current value is a dict, dive into it
if isinstance(this_dict[key], dict):
if target_key in this_dict[key]:
this_dict[key].pop(target_key)
this_dict[key] = find_remove(this_dict[key], target_key)
return this_dict
dict_nested_new = find_remove(nested_dict, "sub_key2a")
The trick
The trick is to find out in advance whether a target_key is among the next children (= this_dict[key] = the values of the current dict iteration) before you reach the child level recursively. Only then you can still delete a key:value pair of the child level while iterating over a dictionary. Once you have reached the same level as the key to be deleted and then try to delete it from there, you would get the error:
RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration
The recursive solution makes any change only on the next values' sub-level and therefore avoids the error.

I got the same problem and I used following procedure to solve this issue.
Python List can be iterate even if you modify during iterating over it.
so for following code it will print 1's infinitely.
for i in list:
list.append(1)
print 1
So using list and dict collaboratively you can solve this problem.
d_list=[]
d_dict = {}
for k in d_list:
if d_dict[k] is not -1:
d_dict[f(k)] = -1 # rather than deleting it mark it with -1 or other value to specify that it will be not considered further(deleted)
d_dict[g(k)] = v # add a new item
d_list.append(g(k))

Today I had a similar use-case, but instead of simply materializing the keys on the dictionary at the beginning of the loop, I wanted changes to the dict to affect the iteration of the dict, which was an ordered dict.
I ended up building the following routine, which can also be found in jaraco.itertools:
def _mutable_iter(dict):
"""
Iterate over items in the dict, yielding the first one, but allowing
it to be mutated during the process.
>>> d = dict(a=1)
>>> it = _mutable_iter(d)
>>> next(it)
('a', 1)
>>> d
{}
>>> d.update(b=2)
>>> list(it)
[('b', 2)]
"""
while dict:
prev_key = next(iter(dict))
yield prev_key, dict.pop(prev_key)
The docstring illustrates the usage. This function could be used in place of d.iteritems() above to have the desired effect.