How Can I Deep Merge Nested Dictionaries in Python and Handle Conflicts?

Deep Merging Dictionaries of Dictionaries in Python

When working with complex data structures, it often becomes necessary to merge multiple dictionaries to create a unified representation. One particular challenge arises when the dictionaries contain nested structures of dictionaries, referred to as "deep merging."

To tackle this challenge, we can leverage a recursive approach in Python. The following function effectively merges dictionaries while handling conflicts gracefully:

def merge(a: dict, b: dict, path=[]):
    for key in b:
        if key in a:
            if isinstance(a[key], dict) and isinstance(b[key], dict):
                merge(a[key], b[key], path + [str(key)])
            elif a[key] != b[key]:
                raise Exception('Conflict at ' + '.'.join(path + [str(key)]))
        else:
            a[key] = b[key]
    return a

In the case of conflicting values, the function will raise an exception.

To illustrate the usage, consider the following example:

dict1 = {1:{'a':{'A'}}, 2:{'b':{'B'}}}
dict2 = {2:{'c':{'C'}}, 3:{'d':{'D'}}}

By using merge(dict1, dict2), we can obtain the desired result:

{1:{'a':{'A'}}, 2:{'b':{'B'},'c':{'C'}}, 3:{'d':{'D'}}}

This approach ensures that nesting within dictionaries is handled efficiently, allowing for the deep merging of complex data structures.

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