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Tomas Skacel
Python Development Techdegree Graduate 8,994 PointsOriginal data is being changed even though a copy was made
from data import data
def data_cleaner(arg):
for dictionary in arg:
namesplit = dictionary['name'].split(' ')
dictionary['first name'] = namesplit[0]
dictionary['last name'] = namesplit[1]
del(dictionary['name'])
if dictionary['admin'] == 'False':
dictionary['admin'] = False
elif dictionary['admin'] == 'True':
dictionary['admin'] = True
dictionary['id'] = int(dictionary['id'])
return arg
data_copy = data.copy()
cleaned_data = data_cleaner(data_copy)
Hello! This was my initial attempt at this challenge. It does what the challenge asked for, but I did notice something strange. The reason I made a copy of data was to preserve a copy of the original. However, if I print data after running my code, data has been changed and is the same as cleaned_data, even though data was never passed into the function. Why is this happening? Is there any way to make this work?
1 Answer
Rachel Johnson
Treehouse TeacherHey Tomas Skacel , thanks for your question!
The reason that the original is showing changes is because a shallow copy() was used to copy the data. If you want to preserve the original, what we call a "deep" copy, you'll want to use .deepcopy()
From the Python docs:
- A shallow copy constructs a new compound object and then (to the extent possible) inserts references into it to the objects found in the original.
- A deep copy constructs a new compound object and then, recursively, inserts copies into it of the objects found in the original.
I hope this helps!