Modifying a Python dict while iterating over it

It is explicitly mentioned on the Python doc page (for Python 2.7) that

Using iteritems() while adding or deleting entries in the dictionary may raise a RuntimeError or fail to iterate over all entries.

Similarly for Python 3.

The same holds for iter(d), d.iterkeys() and d.itervalues(), and I'll go as far as saying that it does for for k, v in d.items(): (I can't remember exactly what for does, but I would not be surprised if the implementation called iter(d)).

I have a large dictionary containing Numpy arrays, so the dict.copy().keys() thing suggested by @murgatroid99 was not feasible (though it worked). Instead, I just converted the keys_view to a list and it worked fine (in Python 3.4):

for item in list(dict_d.keys()):
    temp = dict_d.pop(item)
    dict_d['some_key'] = 1  # Some value

I realize this doesn't dive into the philosophical realm of Python's inner workings like the answers above, but it does provide a practical solution to the stated problem.

Alex Martelli weighs in on this here.

It may not be safe to change the container (e.g. dict) while looping over the container. So del d[f(k)] may not be safe. As you know, the workaround is to use d.copy().items() (to loop over an independent copy of the container) instead of d.iteritems() or d.items() (which use the same underlying container).

It is okay to modify the value at an existing index of the dict, but inserting values at new indices (e.g. d[g(k)] = v) may not work.

You cannot do that, at least with d.iteritems(). I tried it, and Python fails with

RuntimeError: dictionary changed size during iteration

If you instead use d.items(), then it works.

In Python 3, d.items() is a view into the dictionary, like d.iteritems() in Python 2. To do this in Python 3, instead use d.copy().items(). This will similarly allow us to iterate over a copy of the dictionary in order to avoid modifying the data structure we are iterating over.