I can't find it now, but I believe Marc-Andre mentioned that CPython's list.sort() was vulnerable to attack too, because of its O(n log n) worst-case behavior.
I wouldn't worry about that, because nobody could stir up anguish about it by writing a paper ;-) 1. O(n log n) is enormously more forgiving than O(n**2). 2. An attacker need not be clever at all: O(n log n) is not only sort()'s worst case, it's also its _expected_ case when fed randomly ordered data. 3. It's provable that no comparison-based sorting algorithm can have better worst-case asymptotic behavior when fed randomly ordered data. So if anyone whines about this, tell 'em to go do something useful instead :-) still-solving-problems-not-in-need-of-attention-ly y'rs - tim _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
