Python: Split list of dicts by key

Question

If I have a bunch of dicts in a list like:

people = [{"name": "Abe", "age": 40},
          {"name": "Bob", "age": 25},
          {"name": "Charles", "age": 32}]

I want to split it so it looks like

names = ["Abe", "Bob", "Charles"]
ages = [40, 25, 32]

I know I can do two separate list comprehensions (ex: names = [person["name"] for person in people] twice), but is there any trick to split this data in a one-liner?

Answer 1

You can use the zip trick:

>>> names, ages = zip(*(d.values() for d in people))
>>> names
('Abe', 'Bob', 'Charles')
>>> ages
(40, 25, 32)

Note that this will only work on Python 3.7 and later as dictionaries are insertion ordered in those versions.