# The standard string repr for dicts is hard to read: my_mapping = {'a': 23, 'b': 42, 'c': 0xc0ffee} # The "json" module can do a much better job: import json print(json.dumps(my_mapping, indent=4, sort_keys=True)) { "a": 23, "b": 42, "c": 12648430 } # Note this only works with dicts containing # primitive types (check out the "pprint" module): #json.dumps({all: 'yup'}) #TypeError: keys must be a string