[Python-Dev] Re: Re: lists v. tuples (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Tue, 15 Apr 2003 19:49:50 -0400

Guido> And then we should also change list.sort(), as Tim points Guido> out. Maybe we can start introducing this earlier by using Guido> keyword arguments:

Guido> list.sort(lt=function) sorts using a < implementation_ _Guido> list.sort(cmp=function) sorts using a cmp implementation

[Andrew Koenig]

The keyword argument might not be necessary: It is always possible for a function such as sort to figure out whether a comparison function is 2-way or 3-way (assuming it matters) by doing only one extra comparison.

That's cute, but a bit too magical for my taste... It's not immediately obvious how this would be done (I know how, but it would require a lot of explaining). Plus, -1 is a perfectly valid truth value.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)