Why are dictionary objects unhashable in Python

Question

Hi all, quick question. As per the title, I wanted to know why we cannot put in any key of our choice of a dictionary type as a dictionary (dict)?

Does it mean that there is absolutely no way to have a dictionary with a key referring to another dictionary?

All help appreciated!

Answer 1

Hi, it is not possible to hash a dictionary.

You might be wondering why. It is because they are actually mutable containers of data and it is as simple as that. 

So if the dictionary was hashed, then the contents of the hash table would vary/change along with the change in content respectively which doesn't make any sense with respect to data usage.

Hope this helped!