public/subjects/devops/merge_two/README.md

Merge two

One very useful data structure in Python are the dictionaries, in this exercise we will start to familiarize and use them.

Instructions

Create a file merge_two.py which will have a function named merge_two(). This function will accept two dictionaries, create a third one which will be the merge of the two inputs and return it as a serialized JSON string.

Here is the prototype of the function:

def merge_two(first_dict, second_dict):
    # this is a function,
    # write your code here

Usage

Here is a possible code to test your function. Put it in another file (ex: test.py):

from merge_two import merge_two

first = {
    "Bob": 36,
    "Louise": 23,
    "Lea": 34
}
second = {
    "Louise": 44,
    "Romolo": 30,
    "Lea": 22
}
print(merge_two(first, second))

Run your test file with the following command:

$ python3 test.py
{"Bob": 36, "Louise": 44, "Lea": 22, "Romolo": 30}
$

Hints

• If a key is repeated in both dictionaries the value retained will be the one in second_dict.

• There are different ways to merge dictionaries, take the time to understand the differences in between those techniques and try more than one technique to better retain it.

• Add import json to use the standard functions for JSON manipulation.

References

• Merging dictionaries in Python
• JSON library in Python