Dictionaries and Loops

To obtain a list of the keys in a dictionary, use the keys function. keys can be used with the for statement to process each element of the dictionary in turn:

idlist = {"Smith,Mary":"P12345", "Doe,John":"P12346",
	"Jones,Charlie":"P12347", "Public,John":"P12348",
	"Dobbs,Cindy":"P12349"}

for name in idlist.keys():
	patientid = idlist[name]
	print name, "has Patient ID", patientid

When you run this code, the output is similar to this:

Smith,Mary has Patient ID P12345
Jones,Charlie has Patient ID P12347
Public,John has Patient ID P12348
Dobbs,Cindy has Patient ID P12349
Doe,John has Patient ID P12346

Note that the elements of the dictionary are displayed in no particular order. To sort the keys in alphabetical order, use sort:

idlist = {"Smith,Mary":"P12345", "Doe,John":"P12346",
	"Jones,Charlie":"P12347", "Public,John":"P12348",
	"Dobbs,Cindy":"P12349"}

sortedkeys = idlist.keys()
sortedkeys.sort()
for name in sortedkeys:
	patientid = idlist[name]
	print name, "has Patient ID", patientid

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Dictionaries and Loops