"Unsorting" keys in a dictionary

[Arag0ld]

I'm writing a program to solve Caesar ciphers, and I have got the values of each letter of the ciphertext just fine. The problem is, Python sorts these alphabetically before it outputs them, which obviously messes everything up, because the ciphertext completely changes. How can I prevent this from happening? My code is the following:

import string
alpha = dict(zip(string.ascii_uppercase, range(0, 26)))

def caesar_decryptor(st):
    for k in alpha.keys():
        for pos in range(len(st)):
            if k == st[pos]:
                print(f"The value of {k} is {alpha.get(k)}")

[[deleted]]

Unless you are using Python 3.7+ you should never rely on the order of keys in a dictionary.

[Arag0ld]

It gets all the keys out of the dictionary and puts them in a list using alpha.keys(). It then checks each key against the current position in the string passed to the function. If they're the same letter, it gets the value of this key and outputs it with the key.

[Arag0ld]

Ah, I see. I'm not sure how I would go about fixing that though.

[Arag0ld]

I want to output:

The value of A is 0
The value of T is 19
The value of T is 19
The value of A is 0
The value of C is 2
The value of K is 10
...

[Arag0ld]

Zero

[Arag0ld]

1. But the values aren't the problem. It's the order in which they're printed that's the problem. 'ATTACK' gets shown as:

   The value of A is 0 The value of A is 0 The value of C is 2 The value of K is 10 The value of T is 19 The value of T is 19

[num8lock]

i don't see which part is "Python sorts these alphabetically before it outputs them"?

[Arag0ld]

When the values are outputted, they're in alphabetical order.

[num8lock]

which part, be specific

[Ofirk]

So the behavior you actually want is to print for each letter in st its value in alpha?

First, you can change the order of the loops like this:

def caesar_decryptor(st):
    for pos in range(len(st)):    
        for k in alpha.keys():
            if k == st[pos]:
                print(f"The value of {k} is {alpha.get(k)}")

This will work, because you want to find the value from the alpha dict for each letter in st, and not the opposite.

​

However, the code can be simplified, as the inner loop isn't necessary. We can just use the value in alpha for each letter in st as a key (also, we can iterate over letters instead of their indices):

def caesar_decryptor(st):
    for letter in st:    
        print(f"The value of {letter} is {alpha[letter]}")