Bugs item #1095342, was opened at 2005-01-03 18:16 Message generated for change (Settings changed) made by rhettinger You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=105470&aid=1095342&group_id=5470
Category: None Group: None Status: Open Resolution: None Priority: 5 Submitted By: Tim Delaney (tcdelaney) >Assigned to: A.M. Kuchling (akuchling) Summary: General FAQ: list.sort() out of date Initial Comment: http://www.python.org/doc/faq/general.html#why- doesn-t-list-sort-return-the-sorted-list specifies the idiom: keys = dict.keys() keys.sort() for key in keys: ...do whatever with dict[key]... and doesn't mention sorted(). I would suggest the following wording be used: In situations where performance matters, making a copy of the list just to sort it would be wasteful. Therefore, list.sort() sorts the list in place. In order to remind you of that fact, it does not return the sorted list. This way, you won't be fooled into accidentally overwriting a list when you need a sorted copy but also need to keep the unsorted version around. In Python 2.4 a new builtin - sorted() - has been added. This function creates a new list from the passed iterable, sorts it and returns it. As a result, here's the idiom to iterate over the keys of a dictionary in sorted order: for key in sorted(dict.iterkeys()): ...do whatever with dict[key]... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Comment By: Tim Delaney (tcdelaney) Date: 2005-01-03 18:21 Message: Logged In: YES user_id=603121 Do we want to also reference the 2.3 and earlier idiom? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can respond by visiting: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=105470&aid=1095342&group_id=5470 _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
