import yaml def main(): with open('monsters.yaml') as m: data = yaml.full_load(m) monsterlist = [] for i in data: if 'ac_special' in i: monsterlist.append(i) else: i['ac_special'] = None monsterlist.append(i) finaldata = {'monsters': monsterlist} final = yaml.safe_dump(finaldata, allow_unicode=True) with open('tmp-monsters.yaml', 'w') as f: f.write(final) if __name__ == "__main__": main()