Append a dictionary to a dictionary

Question

I have two existing dictionaries, and I wish to 'append' one of them to the other. By that I mean that the key,values of the other dictionary should be made into the first dictionary. For example:

orig = {
   'A': 1,
   'B': 2,
   'C': 3,
}

extra = {
   'D': 4,
   'E': 5,
}

dest = # Something here involving orig and extra

print dest
{
   'A': 1,
   'B': 2,
   'C': 3,
   'D': 4,
   'E': 5
}

I think this all can be achieved through a for loop (maybe?), but is there some method of dictionaries or any other module that saves this job for me? The actual dictionaries I'm using are really big...

Answer 1

You can do

orig.update(extra)

or, if you don't want orig to be modified, make a copy first:

dest = dict(orig)  # or orig.copy()
dest.update(extra)

Note that if extra and orig have overlapping keys, the final value will be taken from extra. For example,

>>> d1 = {1: 1, 2: 2}
>>> d2 = {2: 'ha!', 3: 3}
>>> d1.update(d2)
>>> d1
{1: 1, 2: 'ha!', 3: 3}