Python: merging dictionaries with lists in lists as values and counting them

Question

I am trying to write a program that can merge two dictionaries (TEXT FILES!). These dictionaries consist of nouns and verbs that have been indexed from different corpora by another program (and then put into a text file). This is the form of these dictionaries:

dict1 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['look up', 1]], 'mall': [['search', 1]]}
dict2 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['lose', 1]], 'ovation': [['receive', 1]], 'mall': [['build', 1]]}

As you can see, they're dictionaries, with keys, that have lists in lists for values. Now I'm trying to get the output like this:

finaldict = {'strawberry': [['eat', 2]], 'family-member': [['look up', 1]['lose',1]], 'mall': [['search', 1]['build', 1]], 'ovation': [['receive', 1]]

Until now, I have been able to merge dict1 and dict2 like this (in a string):

{'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['look up', 1]], 'mall': [['search',
1]], 'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['lose', 1]], 'ovation':
[['receive', 1]], 'mall': [['build', 1]]}

I convert this string as a dictionary with the next statement: finaldict = eval(str1) it turns the whole thing into a dictionary, it also says so when I ask for the type of finaldict, but it won't see the statements like [['eat', 1]] as values or anything. I need this so I can loop over every item and count how many times it appears with which verb.

Answer 1

from collections import Counter

dict1 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['look up', 1]], 'mall': [['search', 1]]}
dict2 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['lose', 1]], 'ovation': [['receive', 1]], 'mall': [['build', 1]]}
result = {k: Counter(dict(v)) for k, v in dict1.items()}
for k, v in dict2.items():
    result.setdefault(k, Counter()).update(dict(v))

result = {k: [list(x) for x in v.items()] for k, v in result.items()}

Answer 2

Nothing too fancy just break it out.

from collections import defaultdict

dict1 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['look up', 1]], 'mall': [['search', 1]]}
dict2 = {'strawberry': [['eat', 1]], 'family-member': [['lose', 1]], 'ovation': [['receive', 1]], 'mall': [['build', 1]]}
keys = set(dict2.keys()).union(dict1.keys())

final = {}
for k in keys:
    d1val = dict1.get(k, [])
    d2val = dict2.get(k, [])

    resd = defaultdict(lambda: 0)

    for word, count in d1val:
        resd[word] += count

    for word, count in d2val:
        resd[word] += count

    final[k] = [list(i) for i in resd.items()]