I have a code snippet here that prints a dict in an arbitrary order.
(Certain keys first, with rest appearing in sorted order). I didn't
want to subclass dict, that's error-prone, and overkill for my needs. I
just need something that returns a value like dict.__str__, with a key
ordering I specify.
If you have any opinions on how it could be made better, I'm all ears!
def DictToString(d, preferred_order = ['gid', 'type',
'parent', 'name']):
' Return a string containing the sorted dict'
keys = d.keys()
keys.sort()
sortmax = len(preferred_o rder)
for i in range(sortmax-1, -1, -1):
sortkey = preferred_order[i]
try:
index = keys.index(sort key)
except ValueError:
continue
temp = keys[index]
del keys[index]
keys.insert(0, temp)
s = []
s.append('{')
max = len(keys)
for i in range(max):
key = keys[i]
val = d[key]
s.append(repr(k ey))
s.append(': ')
s.append(repr(v al))
if i < max-1:
s.append(', ')
s.append('}')
return ''.join(s)
def main():
d = {'whatever': 145,
'gid': 123456789012345 67890,
'name': 'Name',
'type': 'an egg',
32: 'Thirty-two (32)'}
# Convert dicts to strings
s1 = str(d)
s2 = DictToString(d)
print "Python str:", s1
print "Custom str:", s2
# Verify the strings are different
assert(s1 != s2)
# Convert the strings back to dicts
d1 = eval(s1)
d2 = eval(s2)
# Verify the dicts are equivalent
assert(d1 == d2)
print "\nSuccess! \n"
main()
(Certain keys first, with rest appearing in sorted order). I didn't
want to subclass dict, that's error-prone, and overkill for my needs. I
just need something that returns a value like dict.__str__, with a key
ordering I specify.
If you have any opinions on how it could be made better, I'm all ears!
def DictToString(d, preferred_order = ['gid', 'type',
'parent', 'name']):
' Return a string containing the sorted dict'
keys = d.keys()
keys.sort()
sortmax = len(preferred_o rder)
for i in range(sortmax-1, -1, -1):
sortkey = preferred_order[i]
try:
index = keys.index(sort key)
except ValueError:
continue
temp = keys[index]
del keys[index]
keys.insert(0, temp)
s = []
s.append('{')
max = len(keys)
for i in range(max):
key = keys[i]
val = d[key]
s.append(repr(k ey))
s.append(': ')
s.append(repr(v al))
if i < max-1:
s.append(', ')
s.append('}')
return ''.join(s)
def main():
d = {'whatever': 145,
'gid': 123456789012345 67890,
'name': 'Name',
'type': 'an egg',
32: 'Thirty-two (32)'}
# Convert dicts to strings
s1 = str(d)
s2 = DictToString(d)
print "Python str:", s1
print "Custom str:", s2
# Verify the strings are different
assert(s1 != s2)
# Convert the strings back to dicts
d1 = eval(s1)
d2 = eval(s2)
# Verify the dicts are equivalent
assert(d1 == d2)
print "\nSuccess! \n"
main()
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