Stop NSDictionary from sorting its items

Question

I have this code

NSDictionary *tempDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjects:
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"authorId","authorName","authorDescription",@"image",nil] forKeys:
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"id",@"name",@"desc",@"image",nil]];
NSLog(@"%@",[tempDict description]);

and the output is

desc = authorDescription;

id = authorId;

image = image;

name = authorName;

You see that the dictionary is sorted by key, alphabetically, for some reason. This is not good for me, because I need to add this dictionary to a plist, and this plist already has some dictionaries with unsorted keys. So how can I avoid this sorting?

Answer 1

The sorting is due to [NSDictionary description], which is used by NSLog. It's not a fundamental feature of NSDictionary. If you access the keys through fast enumeration or [dictionary allKeys], you won't find it sorted.

But to your underlying question, if what you want is "unsorted" (random), then "sorted" is just one of the possible random sequences. If you really want unsorted, then sorted shouldn't matter because its a subset.

If sorting matters, then you don't mean "unsorted," you mean "some other sorted order, such as insertion order." If you need NSDictionary to be sorted in some way, you need to impose that by converting it into an NSArray.

Answer 2

It's not sorted. It's displaying in an arbitrary order. Add some more items and you'll probably see the order change.

(It's possible that, internally, the storage is, for some mad reason, actually sorted, but there's nothing you can do about that.)