Python dictionary returns keys in random order

user_8776569 0
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I have a simple dict of dicts as follows:

stb = {
    'TH0':{0:'S0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    'TH1':{0:'Sa0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    'TH2':{0:'Sam0',1:'Sampled1.0',2:'Sampled2.0',3:'Sampled4.0'},
    'TH3':{0:'Samp0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    'TH4':{0:'Sampl0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
}
tb = stb

theaders = []
for k in tb.keys():
    theaders.append(k)
columns = len(theaders)
rows = len(tb[theaders[0]])
print(tb[theaders[0]])
print('Cols: ',columns)
print('Rows: ',rows)

for h in theaders:
    print(h)
`

The problem here is that, every single time I run this snippet, theaders has values in a random order.For example, First Run:

{0: 'Samp0', 1: 'Sample1', 2: 'Sample2', 3: 'Sample4'}
Cols:  5
Rows:  4
TH3
TH0
TH4
TH1
TH2

Second Run:

{0: 'S0', 1: 'Sample1', 2: 'Sample2', 3: 'Sample4'}
Cols:  5
Rows:  4
TH0
TH2
TH4
TH1
TH3

Note: This was never the case before but for some reason, it just started happening and I really need those keys in their correct order.

Also Note: Simply sorting this would not work as the real data has string keys that should not be sorted.

python-3.x python
2 Answers

For python 3.6, dictionaries maintaining insertion order is an implementation detail. In python 3.7 it's guaranteed and documented. You didn't specify which version of Python you're using but I assume it's earlier than 3.6. One option would be to use an ordered dictionary, OrderedDict from the collections module, where insertion order is guaranteed for older versions of python.

user_89419260

That is because dictionaries are unordered in Python. If you are looking to retain the order of keys, you should try OrderedDict as follows.

from collections import OrderedDict

stb = OrderedDict(
    TH0 = {0:'S0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    TH1 = {0:'Sa0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    TH2 = {0:'Sam0',1:'Sampled1.0',2:'Sampled2.0',3:'Sampled4.0'},
    TH3 = {0:'Samp0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
    TH4 = {0:'Sampl0',1:'Sample1',2:'Sample2',3:'Sample4'},
)

tb = stb # As I see, this is not necessary (as we are not using std anywhere in the 
         # following code)

theaders = []
for k in tb.keys():
    theaders.append(k)

columns = len(theaders)
rows = len(tb[theaders[0]])

print(tb[theaders[0]])
print('Cols: ',columns)
print('Rows: ',rows)

for h in theaders:
    print(h)
user_66151630
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