Sorting a dictionary by value

[Max M]

Roy Culley wrote:
> I'm sorry if this is a novice question but I have searched google
> and the python FAQ and haven't found an answer.
> 
> I have a large dictionary where I want to sort and print based
> on the largest values in a dictionary and not the keys.
> 
> Now in perl you can do:
> 
>     @Keys = sort { $Hash{$b} <=> $Hash{$a} } keys %Hash;
> 
> Is there any such magic for python?

# the basic sort
sortedList = [(key, theDict[key]) for key in theDict.keys()]
sortedList.sort()

# if you want most frequent first
sortedList.reverse()

# plain printout
for frequency, word in sortedList:
     print 'word: %s, freq: %s' % (word, frequency)

# or for a faster printout of large amounts of text
print '\n'.join(['word: %s, freq: %s' % (item[1], item[0]) for item in 
sortedList])


regards Max M

Hmmm seems to me that I answered this only yeasterday. Oh wait ... I did ;-)