Readably print out a python dict() sorted by key

Question

I would like to print a python dictionary to a file using PrettyPrinter (for human readability) but have the dictionary be sorted by key in the output file to further improv

Answer 1

The Python pprint module actually already sorts dictionaries by key. In versions prior to Python 2.5, the sorting was only triggered on dictionaries whose pretty-printed representation spanned multiple lines, but in 2.5.X and 2.6.X, all dictionaries are sorted.

Generally, though, if you're writing data structures to a file and want them human-readable and writable, you might want to consider using an alternate format like YAML or JSON. Unless your users are themselves programmers, having them maintain configuration or application state dumped via pprint and loaded via eval can be a frustrating and error-prone task.