Readably print out a python dict() sorted by key

Question

Actually pprint seems to sort the keys for you under python2.5

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> mydict = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3}
>>> pprint(mydict)
{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3}
>>> mydict = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4, 'e':5}
>>> pprint(mydict)
{'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
>>> d = dict(zip("kjihgfedcba",range(11)))
>>> pprint(d)
{'a': 10,
 'b': 9,
 'c': 8,
 'd': 7,
 'e': 6,
 'f': 5,
 'g': 4,
 'h': 3,
 'i': 2,
 'j': 1,
 'k': 0}

But not always under python 2.4

>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> mydict = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3, 'd':4, 'e':5}
>>> pprint(mydict)
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, 'b': 2, 'e': 5, 'd': 4}
>>> d = dict(zip("kjihgfedcba",range(11)))
>>> pprint(d)
{'a': 10,
 'b': 9,
 'c': 8,
 'd': 7,
 'e': 6,
 'f': 5,
 'g': 4,
 'h': 3,
 'i': 2,
 'j': 1,
 'k': 0}
>>> 

Reading the source code of pprint.py (2.5) it does sort the dictionary using

items = object.items()
items.sort()

for multiline or this for single line

for k, v in sorted(object.items()):

before it attempts to print anything, so if your dictionary sorts properly like that then it should pprint properly. In 2.4 the second sorted() is missing (didn't exist then) so objects printed on a single line won't be sorted.

So the answer appears to be use python2.5, though this doesn't quite explain your output in the question.

Python3 Update

Pretty print by sorted keys (lambda x: x[0]):

for key, value in sorted(dict_example.items(), key=lambda x: x[0]): 
    print("{} : {}".format(key, value))

Pretty print by sorted values (lambda x: x[1]):

for key, value in sorted(dict_example.items(), key=lambda x: x[1]): 
    print("{} : {}".format(key, value))

Another alternative :

>>> mydict = {'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3}
>>> import json

Then with python2 :

>>> print json.dumps(mydict, indent=4, sort_keys=True) # python 2
{
    "a": 1, 
    "b": 2, 
    "c": 3
}

or with python 3 :

>>> print(json.dumps(mydict, indent=4, sort_keys=True)) # python 3
{
    "a": 1, 
    "b": 2, 
    "c": 3
}

The Python pprint module actually already sorts dictionaries by key. In versions prior to Python 2.5, the sorting was only triggered on dictionaries whose pretty-printed representation spanned multiple lines, but in 2.5.X and 2.6.X, all dictionaries are sorted.

Generally, though, if you're writing data structures to a file and want them human-readable and writable, you might want to consider using an alternate format like YAML or JSON. Unless your users are themselves programmers, having them maintain configuration or application state dumped via pprint and loaded via eval can be a frustrating and error-prone task.

An easy way to print the sorted contents of the dictionary, in Python 3:

>>> dict_example = {'c': 1, 'b': 2, 'a': 3}
>>> for key, value in sorted(dict_example.items()):
...   print("{} : {}".format(key, value))
... 
a : 3
b : 2
c : 1

The expression dict_example.items() returns tuples, which can then be sorted by sorted():

>>> dict_example.items()
dict_items([('c', 1), ('b', 2), ('a', 3)])
>>> sorted(dict_example.items())
[('a', 3), ('b', 2), ('c', 1)]

Below is an example to pretty print the sorted contents of a Python dictionary's values.

for key, value in sorted(dict_example.items(), key=lambda d_values: d_values[1]): 
    print("{} : {}".format(key, value))

I wrote the following function to print dicts, lists, and tuples in a more readable format:

def printplus(obj):
    """
    Pretty-prints the object passed in.

    """
    # Dict
    if isinstance(obj, dict):
        for k, v in sorted(obj.items()):
            print u'{0}: {1}'.format(k, v)

    # List or tuple            
    elif isinstance(obj, list) or isinstance(obj, tuple):
        for x in obj:
            print x

    # Other
    else:
        print obj

Example usage in iPython:

>>> dict_example = {'c': 1, 'b': 2, 'a': 3}
>>> printplus(dict_example)
a: 3
b: 2
c: 1

>>> tuple_example = ((1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6), (7, 8))
>>> printplus(tuple_example)
(1, 2)
(3, 4)
(5, 6)
(7, 8)

I had the same problem you had. I used a for loop with the sorted function passing in the dictionary like so:

for item in sorted(mydict):
    print(item)

You could transform this dict a little to ensure that (as dicts aren't kept sorted internally), e.g.

pprint([(key, mydict[key]) for key in sorted(mydict.keys())])