Robert Bossy wrote: > I wish to know how two dict objects are compared. By browsing the > archives I gathered that the number of items are first compared, but if > the two dict objects have the same number of items, then the comparison > algorithm was not mentioned.
If I interpret the comments in http://svn.python.org/view/python/trunk/Objects/dictobject.c?rev=64048&view=markup correctly it's roughly def characterize(d, e): return min(((k, v) for k, v in d.iteritems() if k not in e or e[k] != v), key=lambda (k, v): k) def dict_compare(d, e): result = cmp(len(d), len(e)) if result: return result try: ka, va = characterize(d, e) except ValueError: return 0 kb, vb = characterize(e, d) return cmp(ka, kb) or cmp(va, vb) Peter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
