[IPython-dev] Incompatible change discussion: Pretty printing of ordered dict.

Thomas Kluyver takowl at gmail.com
Wed Aug 2 16:32:34 EDT 2017


I don't have a particular concrete use case, but as an experienced Python
programmer who knows that dicts are conceptually unordered, I like the
sorted presentation and would be sorry to lose it. It makes it easier to
quickly find something in a dict if its shown in alphabetical order.

If the dict maintaining insertion order becomes a language feature rather
than an implementation detail, I would favour showing that. But for now
it's an implementation detail, so it shouldn't change how we think about
dicts.

Thomas

On 2 August 2017 at 19:44, Matthias Bussonnier <bussonniermatthias at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> As you may or may not be aware, with Python 3.6 the dictionary are
> ordered by default. It is technically an implementation detail, though
> some people would love for it not to.
>
> Regardless, IPython has for a long time pretty-printed the dictionary
> with _sorted_ keys, this thus prevent to teach python and show that
> dictionaries maintain order. Thus there is the question of wether we
> should disable sorting keys while pretty-printing.
>
> https://github.com/ipython/ipython/issues/10110
>
> This seem like a minor change, but I'd like to know if some of you are
> _relying_ on the ordering of dict when they are printed, or have
> compelling arguments against (or for) removing sorting of the keys
> before pretty_printing.
>
> If you care about the above subject, please have your voice heard in
> above issue.
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Matthias
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