Python 2 dict_items.sort() in Python 3

Question

I'm porting some code from Python 2 to 3. This is valid code in Python 2 syntax:

def print_sorted_dictionary(dictionary):  
    items=dictionary.items()  
    items.sort()

In Python 3, the dict_items have no method 'sort' - how can I make a workaround for this in Python 3?

Answer 1

Use items = sorted(dictionary.items()), it works great in both Python 2 and Python 3.

Answer 2

dict.items returns a view instead of a list in Python 3 (somewhat similarly to the iteritems method in Python 2.x). To get a sorted list of the items use

sorted_items = sorted(d.items())

The sorted builtin takes an iterable and returns a new list of its items, sorted.