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copysort patch, was RE: [Python-Dev] inline sort option

Mark Russell marktrussell at btopenworld.com
Tue Oct 21 07:18:16 EDT 2003 
On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 12:00, Alex Martelli wrote:
> Why should multiple data types acquire separate .sort methods with
> subtly different semantics (one works in-place and returns None, one
> doesn't mutate the object and returns a list, ...) when there's no real
> added value wrt ONE classmethod of list...?

I agree that the different semantics for lists and dicts are a strike
against this.  The argument for it is that walking over a dictionary in
sorted order is (at least to me) a missing idiom in python.  Does this
never come up when you're teaching the language?

I wouldn't advocate adding this to other types (e.g. Set) because
they're much less commonly used than dicts, so I don't think there's a
danger of a creeping plague of sort methods.  Not a big deal though -
list.sorted() is the real win.

Mark Russell

PS: I'm really not an anal-retentive keystoke counter :-)
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