[Python-Dev] Re: timsort? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 04 Jun 2003 08:00:37 -0400

Tim Peters wrote:

> Note that we switched from doing two minor releases per year, to > something like one minor release per two years (2.2 was released > in 2001!). timsort is less than a year old, IIRC. Since it can > raise MemoryError where the 2.2 sort could not, and may compute > different results on the same inputs, it was much more a new > feature than a bugfix. Remind me why raising MemoryError is better than punting and sorting the list some other way? Gareth McCaughan

Because the old way requires just as much code as the new way, and we don't want both versions of the code around?

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