Sort dictionary by integers of dictionary keys

Question

Let\'s say I have a dictionary like so:

thedict={\'1\':\'the\',\'2\':2,\'3\':\'five\',\'10\':\'orange\'}

and I want to sort this dictionary by

Answer 1

This is one of the times when people's inexplicable attraction to itemgetter can lead them astray. Simply use a lambda:

>>> thedict={'1':'the','2':2,'3':'five','10':'orange'}
>>> sorted(thedict.iteritems(), key=lambda x: int(x[0]))
[('1', 'the'), ('2', 2), ('3', 'five'), ('10', 'orange')]

The problem is that int(operator.itemgetter(0)) is being evaluated immediately, in order to pass it as an argument to sorted. So you're building an itemgetter, and then trying to call int on it (which isn't working, because it's not a string or a number).