Clarify wording of order='deterministic' in docstrings#1011
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Dicts in Python 3.7+ are ordered by insertion order per the language spec, so calling them "unordered collections" was incorrect. Reword to explain that dict keys and set elements are sorted so that values which compare equal produce identical encoded output, regardless of insertion or iteration order. Closes #825
jcrist
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Apr 10, 2026
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Closes #825.
Dicts in Python 3.7+ are ordered by insertion order per the language spec, so describing them as "unordered collections" in the
order='deterministic'docstring was technically incorrect and confusing (as raised in #825).The actual reason
order='deterministic'sorts dict keys is not "consistency between runs" (insertion order is already stable within a run), but to ensure that dicts which compare equal produce identical encoded output, regardless of how they were constructed:Reword the bullet across all encoder docstrings (
json.encode,msgpack.encode,yaml.encode,toml.encode,Encoder,JSONEncoder,convert) to make this clearer. No behavior change.