Last modified: Jan 10, 2023 By Alexander Williams

How to Properly Check if a Dictionary is Empty in Python

In this article, we'll show you the good and the worst way to check if a list is empty.

checking if a dictionary is empty [the good way]

Example 1


#dictionary     
dictionary = {}

#check if the dictionary is empty
if not dictionary:
    print('the Dictionary is empty.')
else:
    print('the Dictionary is not empty.') 

output

the Dictionary is empty.

Example 2


#dictionary     
dictionary = {"key":"val", "key":"val"}

#check if the dictionary is empty
if not dictionary:
    print('the Dictionary is empty.')
else:
    print('the Dictionary is not empty.')    


output

the Dictionary is not empty.

example 2: checking if a dictionary is empty [the worst way]

Example 1


#dictionary     
dictionary = {}

#check if the dictionary is empty
if len(dictionary) == 0:
    print('the Dictionary is empty.')
else:
    print('the Dictionary is not empty.') 

output

the Dictionary is empty.

Example 2


#dictionary     
dictionary = {"key":"val", "key":"val"}

#check if the dictionary is empty
if len(dictionary) == 0:
    print('the Dictionary is empty.')
else:
    print('the Dictionary is not empty.')    

output

the Dictionary is not empty.

in the examples above, we have checked the dictionary by using len() built-in function, it's working but in python, we don't need to use len() to check empty variables, list, dictionary, tuple.