Dictionary sorting

[Tim Chase]

On 11/03/11 16:36, Terry Reedy wrote:
>   >  Is there a way to not sort them and leave the order as is?
>
> CPython iterates (and prints) dict items in their arbitrary internal
> hash table order, which depends on the number and entry order of the
> items. It is a bug to depend on that arbitrary order in any way.

Does this "never trust it" hold even for two consecutive 
iterations over an unchanged dict?  I didn't see anything in the 
docs[1] to make such a claim, but at least from my experience, 
one can reliably assert

   d = {}
   randomly_populate(d)
   list1 = list(d.iterkeys())
   list2 = list(d.iterkeys())
   assert list1 == list2

I understand all bets are off if one adds/removes (or maybe 
changes the values) of the dict between iterations, but I didn't 
know if what I saw was merely an implementation detail that 
shouldn't be counted on.

-tkc

[1]
http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#mapping-types-dict