PEP 234: Iterators

[Russell E. Owen]

In article <mailman.988683902.13127.python-list at python.org>,
 Guido van Rossum <guido at digicool.com> wrote:

(Very nice proposal elided...)

>...We could also add methods to dictionaries that return
>      different kinds of iterators, e.g.
>
>          for key, value in dict.iteritems(): ...
>
>          for value in dict.itervalues(): ...
>
>          for key in dict.iterkeys(): ...

Yes! A suggested enhancement: each of these functions takes an optional 
argument "sorted" which defaults to false (e.g. 0 or None) but could be 
true (e.g. 1). Setting it true iterates over the dictionary in 
keyword-sorted order.

I find I often want to iterate over a dictionary in keyword-sorted 
order, and it's rather ugly to do right now (partly because "sort" 
doesn't return the sorted list). This would neatly handle the situation.

-- Russell