dict

Python 3 dictionaries have .keys(), .values(), and .items() methods which return memory-efficient set-like iterator objects, not lists. (See PEP 3106.)

If your dictionaries are small, performance is not critical, and you don't need the set-like behaviour of iterator objects from Python 3, you can of course stick with standard Python 3 code in your Py2/3 compatible codebase:

# Assuming d is a native dict ...

for item in d:
    # code here

for item in d.items():
    # code here

for value in d.values():
    # code here

In this case there will be memory overhead of list creation for each call to items, values or keys.

For improved efficiency, future.builtins provides a Python 2 dict subclass whose :func:`keys`, :func:`values`, and :func:`items` methods return iterators on all versions of Python >= 2.6. On Python 2.7, these iterators also have the same set-like view behaviour as dictionaries in Python 3. This can streamline code that iterates over large dictionaries. For example:

from __future__ import print_function
from future.builtins import dict, range

# Memory-efficient construction:
d = dict((i, i**2) for i in range(10**7))

assert not isinstance(d.items(), list)

# Because items() is memory-efficient, so is this:
d2 = dict((v, k) for (k, v) in d.items())

On Python 2.6, these methods currently return iterators but do not support the new Py3 set-like behaviour.

As usual, on Python 3 future.builtins.dict is just the built-in dict class.

Memory-efficiency and alternatives

If you already have large native dictionaries, the downside to wrapping them in a dict call is that memory is copied (on both Py3 and with future.builtins.dict). For example:

# Currently, this allocates and then frees a large amount of temporary
# memory:
d = dict({i: i**2 for i in range(10**7)})

If dictionary methods like values and items are called only once, this obviously negates the memory benefits offered by the overridden methods through not creating temporary lists.

The memory-efficient (and CPU-efficient) alternatives are:

• to construct a dictionary from an iterator. The above line could use a generator like this:

  d = dict((i, i**2) for i in range(10**7)
  

• to construct an empty dictionary with a dict() call using future.builtins.dict (rather than {}) and then update it;

• to use the viewitems etc. functions from :mod:`future.utils`, passing in regular dictionaries:

  from future.utils import viewkeys, viewvalues, viewitems
  
  for (key, value) in viewitems(hugedictionary):
      # some code here
  
  # Set intersection:
  d = {i**2: i for i in range(1000)}
  both = viewkeys(d) & set(range(0, 1000, 7))
  
  # Set union:
  both = viewvalues(d1) | viewvalues(d2)
  

For Python 2.6 compatibility, the functions iteritems etc. are also available in :mod:`future.utils`. These are equivalent to the functions of the same names in six, which is equivalent to calling the iteritems etc. methods on Python 2, or to calling items etc. on Python 3.