Question

    r_dict={'answer1': "value1",'answer11': "value11",'answer2': "value2",'answer3': "value3",'answer4': "value4",}

    for i in r_dict:
        if("answer" in i.lower()):
           print i

  Result is answer11,answer2,snswer4,answer3

I am using Python 2.4.3. I there any way to get the order in which it is populated?

Or is there a way to do this by regular expression since I am using the older Python version?

Answer 1

Dictionaries are unordered – that is, they do have some order, but it’s influenced in nonobvious ways by the order of insertion and the hash of the keys. However, there is another implementation that remembers the order of insertion, collections.OrderedDict.

Edit: For Python 2.4, there are several third party implementations. I haven’t used any, but since the one from voidspace looks promising.