Sorting a dictionary

[tomtetlaw]

I want to sort a dictionary, say that it was like this:

a_dict = {'2':12354, '1':12355432, '4':35342, '3':858743}

How would I be able to sort it so it's like this:

a_dict = {'1':12355432, '2':12354,  '3':85874, '4':35342}

Is there any algorithms already built it?
Or do i have to make one myself

any help would be appreciated :)

[snippsat]

When take out data from a dictionary order is not important.
But here is a soultion.

>>> a_dict = {'2':12354, '1':12355432, '4':35342, '3':858743}
>>> sorted(a_dict.items(), key=lambda (v,k): (v,k))
[('1', 12355432), ('2', 12354), ('3', 858743), ('4', 35342)]
>>>

[sab786]

Ok so i have a file which i read in ... then i read the data line by line and create lists

basically i needed to organsise(sort the data, in numerical order which i can do no problem and when i do the print statement it all works... no how can i write this sorted data into a new file?

when i do i get loads of lines into my new with the final line having all my data in the sorted order??? its because i need to carry out further functions on the sorted data ..

any suggestions????

i can mail my codes if anyone can help( im trying to so the excel sort function to my data if that makes sense?)

thanks xx

[snippsat]

Can you make a new post with same question sab786.
If you have som code or how output list look,post that.

It`s not good forum behavior in any forum to hijack thread with new question.

[sneekula]

List values are accessed by their index.
Dictionary values are accessed by their key. To allow for high speed key searches, the keys are in a hash order. So a dictionary sorted alphabetically by it's keys would make no sense and would defeat the whole dictionary idea.

The best you can do is to present the contents of a dictionary the way snippsat did it, as a list of (key, value) tuples. Also as a table (sorted by key) in your program:

name_age = {'Joe': 18, 'Frank': 45, 'Udo': 56, 'Tom': 34}
# as a table sorted by name (key)
for name in sorted(name_age):
    print( "%-10s %d" % (name, name_age[name]) )

"""
my output -->
Frank      45
Joe        18
Tom        34
Udo        56
"""

[sab786]

sorry i did that as soon as i realised i thought i was posting a new thread

[scru]

If you are using Python 3x, an upgrade to python 3.1 will get you the sorted dictionary type. Otherwise, ignore this post.