---
id: od
version: "2.0.2"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: abandoned
---

# od — Shorthand syntax for building OrderedDicts

License: permissive · Maintenance: abandoned · Downloads: 206.1K/mo

## What it is and what it does

The od package is a thin wrapper that adds syntactic sugar for creating OrderedDict instances. Instead of the verbose OrderedDict constructor, you can use bracket notation with colon-separated pairs: od["key": "value", "key2": "value2"]. It also works as a drop-in replacement for the standard OrderedDict constructor.

The package has no runtime dependencies and installs cleanly on Python 3.5 through 3.10. However, it has been abandoned and receives no maintenance. Given that regular Python dicts have preserved insertion order since Python 3.7, the practical need for this convenience wrapper has diminished significantly.

Use it for:

- Writing code that requires insertion-order preservation on Python versions before 3.7 where dict ordering was not guaranteed.
- Reducing verbosity when creating OrderedDict instances in codebases that heavily use ordered dictionaries.
- Legacy projects that depend on this package and need to maintain compatibility without refactoring.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides shorthand syntax to create OrderedDict instances using bracket notation with colon-separated key-value pairs, or as a regular constructor.

No. While the package is permissive (MIT) and installs cleanly, it has been abandoned with no maintenance. More importantly, since Python 3.7 regular dicts preserve insertion order, the core problem this package solves no longer exists. For modern Python code, use dict directly or stick with collections.OrderedDict if you specifically need its other features. Only install if you're maintaining legacy code that already depends on it.

## Install

pip install od
uv add od
poetry add od

## Installing od

Before you install: Installation is straightforward with no runtime dependencies. However, the package has been abandoned since its last commit on 2022-05-30 and will not receive updates or maintenance.

License in practice: Licensed under MIT (permissive), so you can use it freely in commercial or private projects with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart:

pip install od

import od

# Shorthand syntax
result = od["cat": "fish", "mouse": "cheese"]
# Or as regular constructor
result = od([("cat", "fish"), ("mouse", "cheese")])

Verify before relying:

- Whether the shorthand syntax works reliably with Python 3.10 and later versions, or if future releases may break compatibility.
- Whether OrderedDict's role in modern Python (dict preserves insertion order since 3.7) affects the practical value of this package.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: abandoned
- Downloads: 206.1K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

ordereddict shorthand syntax, od bracket notation, create ordereddict quickly, python ordereddict sugar, od package ordereddict, syntactic-sugar, ordereddict, abandoned

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