How to iterate through dict in random order in Python?
You can't. Get the list of keys with .keys()
, shuffle them, then iterate through the list while indexing the original dict.
Or use .items()
, and shuffle and iterate that.
A dict
is an unordered set of key-value pairs. When you iterate a dict
, it is effectively random. But to explicitly randomize the sequence of key-value pairs, you need to work with a different object that is ordered, like a list. dict.items()
, dict.keys()
, and dict.values()
each return lists, which can be shuffled.
items=d.items() # List of tuples
random.shuffle(items)
for key, value in items:
print key, value
keys=d.keys() # List of keys
random.shuffle(keys)
for key in keys:
print key, d[key]
Or, if you don't care about the keys:
values=d.values() # List of values
random.shuffle(values) # Shuffles in-place
for value in values:
print value
You can also "sort by random":
for key, value in sorted(d.items(), key=lambda x: random.random()):
print key, value