[FIXED] How to access an element of a Python dictionary (don't care which one)

Issue

The dictionary in question is a embedding and I would like to write a function that automatically initializes a numpy array to the correct dimensions. To do that I would like to write something like

np.zeros(embedding.first().shape)

which obviously doesn't work.

Obviously I can write

np.zeros(embedding[list(embedding)[0]].shape)

however that feels quite unpythonic (and slow), so I wonder if there is a better way.

Solution

As far as I could understand your goal is initialization of NumPy array with the same dimensions as your first element is? If so, embedding[list(embedding)[0]].shape is a bit unwieldy as you said yourself, more efficient way would be using next and iter functions - which does allow you to skip conversion (the part where you need to convert entire keys view into list).

You'd do it as:

import numpy as np

# Assuming 'embedding' is your dictionary
first_key = next(iter(embedding))
array_shape = embedding[first_key].shape
zero_array = np.zeros(array_shape)

The next(iter(embedding)) line of code fetches first key from the dictionary iterator.

Answered By - str1ng