Odtnhj

I have a python dictionary which looks as follows

The format is key: 'leftname // rightname)'

I want to ensure that each 'leftname' only appears once. If it appears again, I want to delete entire value for that key.

This is what this section of the dictionary should look like afterwards, with entries crossed out (deleted)

Notice how Ruby appears twice. This is fine, as I only need to ensure each 'Leftname' is unique. Each 'RightName' can be repeated.

I have tried to create a seperate array of names with str.split. I am not sure how to use regular expressions to filter out and delete the duplicates.
Quite frankly, I have no idea how I am going to accomplish that.

You can do it like so:

output = 
seen = set()
for k,v in data.items():
 leftname = v.split(' // ')[0]
 if leftname not in seen:
 seen.add(leftname)
 output[k] = v

Where data is the dictionary holding your data.

Here's one working approach:

# simplified example
d = 1:'a // b', 2:'c // d', 3:'a // d', 4:'e // d'

d_new = 
seen_leftname = set()
for key, val in d.items():
 leftname = val.split(' // ')[0]
 if leftname not in seen_leftname:
 seen_leftname.add(leftname)
 d_new[key] = val

print(d_new)
1: 'a // b', 2: 'c // d', 4: 'e // d'

You can also reset the keys:

d_new = 
seen_leftname = set()
key_new = 1
for val in d.values():
 leftname = val.split(' // ')[0]
 if leftname not in seen_leftname:
 seen_leftname.add(leftname)
 d_new[key_new] = val
 key_new += 1

print(d_new)
1: 'a // b', 2: 'c // d', 3: 'e // d'