Another dict method...

[Tim Peters]

[Emile van Sebille, about the 2.2 dict.iteritems() iterator]
> Yes.  Can it retrieve them in sorted order?

No.  The order of retrieval is undefined.  It's not magic, it's fast <wink>.
The only sort gimmick of any kind in the language is list.sort().

> I also see a clear method.  Is there an advantage in using it over simply
> reassigning to a new {} ?

dict.clear() clears the dict in-place, without creating a new object.
Whether that's what you want depends on whether you want aliases (other ways
of getting to the object besides via the name "dict") to see the effect of
the clear too.