Deflate Into Nested JSON | Dataford Interview Questions

Write a function to deflate an array into a multi-layered JSON object.

Each array element is an object with a non-empty path array of string keys and a value. Build and return one nested Python dictionary by creating objects for each path segment. If paths overlap, a later record replaces an earlier value at the same location. If a path requires descending through a scalar, replace that scalar with an object.

Signature: def deflate(records):

Input: A list of { "path": [...], "value": ... } records. Output: A nested dictionary containing the supplied values.

Constraints

Each record contains a non-empty path array.
Each path segment is a string.
Paths contain at most 100 segments.
The total number of path segments across all records is at most 10^5.
Values are valid JSON-compatible values.

Function Signature

def deflate(records):

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