Sort Go map values by keys

The Go blog: Go maps in action has an excellent explanation.

When iterating over a map with a range loop, the iteration order is not specified and is not guaranteed to be the same from one iteration to the next. Since Go 1 the runtime randomizes map iteration order, as programmers relied on the stable iteration order of the previous implementation. If you require a stable iteration order you must maintain a separate data structure that specifies that order.

Here's my modified version of example code: http://play.golang.org/p/dvqcGPYy3-

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "sort"
)

func main() {
    // To create a map as input
    m := make(map[int]string)
    m[1] = "a"
    m[2] = "c"
    m[0] = "b"

    // To store the keys in slice in sorted order
    keys := make([]int, len(m))
    i := 0
    for k := range m {
        keys[i] = k
        i++
    }
    sort.Ints(keys)

    // To perform the opertion you want
    for _, k := range keys {
        fmt.Println("Key:", k, "Value:", m[k])
    }
}

Output:

Key: 0 Value: b
Key: 1 Value: a
Key: 2 Value: c

According to the Go spec, the order of iteration over a map is undefined, and may vary between runs of the program. In practice, not only is it undefined, it's actually intentionally randomized. This is because it used to be predictable, and the Go language developers didn't want people relying on unspecified behavior, so they intentionally randomized it so that relying on this behavior was impossible.

What you'll have to do, then, is pull the keys into a slice, sort them, and then range over the slice like this:

var m map[keyType]valueType
keys := sliceOfKeys(m) // you'll have to implement this
for _, k := range keys {
    v := m[k]
    // k is the key and v is the value; do your computation here
}

All of the answers here now contain the old behavior of maps. In Go 1.12+, you can just print a map value and it will be sorted by key automatically. This has been added because it allows the testing of map values easily.

func main() {
    m := map[int]int{3: 5, 2: 4, 1: 3}
    fmt.Println(m)

    // In Go 1.12+
    // Output: map[1:3 2:4 3:5]

    // Before Go 1.12 (the order was undefined)
    // map[3:5 2:4 1:3]
}

Maps are now printed in key-sorted order to ease testing. The ordering rules are:

• When applicable, nil compares low
• ints, floats, and strings order by <
• NaN compares less than non-NaN floats
• bool compares false before true
• Complex compares real, then imaginary
• Pointers compare by machine address
• Channel values compare by machine address
• Structs compare each field in turn
• Arrays compare each element in turn
• Interface values compare first by reflect.Type describing the concrete type and then by concrete value as described in the previous rules.

When printing maps, non-reflexive key values like NaN were previously displayed as <nil>. As of this release, the correct values are printed.

Read more here.