Items ordering in Python dictionary

Question

I am in simple doubt... I created the following dictionary:

>>> alpha={\'a\': 10, \'b\': 5, \'c\': 11}

But, when I want to see the

Answer 1

Dictonaries are not guaranting sorting of keys. You can find this information in python docs: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/datastructures.html#dictionaries

You can always sort dictionary keys or use other, more specialized collection.

Answer 2

Dictionaries are unordered containers - if you want to preserve order, you can use collections.OrderedDict (Python 2.7 or later), or use another container type which is naturally order-preserving.

Generally if you have an access pattern that cares about ordered retrieval then a dictionary is solving a problem you don't have (fast access to random elements), while giving you a new one.