[Python-Dev] Stable sort and partial order (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Mon Nov 1 17:38:40 CET 2010


On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 2:26 AM, Michael Foord <fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk> wrote:

On 01/11/2010 16:23, Nick Coghlan wrote:

Looking at assertItemsEqual, I'd be inclined to insert a check that falls back to the "unorderablelistdifference" approach in the case where "expected != sorted(reversed(expected))" If that is sufficient then it would be a nice way of keeping the fast path.

As far as I can tell, that check is a valid partial ordering detector for any sequence that contains one or more pairs of items for which LT, EQ and GE are all False:

seq = [{1}, {2}] seq[0] < seq[1]_ False _seq[0] == seq[1]_ False _seq[0] > seq[1] False sorted(seq) [{1}, {2}] sorted(reversed(sorted(seq))) [{2}, {1}]

Obviously, if the sequence doesn't contain any such items (e.g. all subsets of each other), then it will look like a total ordering and use the fast path. I see that as an upside :)

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia



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