Optional key to `bisect`'s functions?
The ``bisect`` stuff is pretty neat, although probably underused (especially the insorts), but their usefulness is limited by the requirement that the lists directly contain sortable items, as opposed to ``sorted`` or ``list.sort``. It's possible to "use" them by copy/pasting the (Python) functions into the project/library code and adding either a custom key directly or a key function, but while this can still yield an order-of-magnitude speed gain over post-sorting sequences, it's cumbersome and it loses the advantage of _bisect's accelerators. Therefore, I believe it would be pretty neat to add an optional ``key=`` keyword (only?) argument, with the same semantics as in ``sorted``. It would make ``bisect`` much easier to use especially in stead of append + sorted combinations. The key should work for both insertion functions and bisection search ones. Thoughts?
participants (7)
-
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc -
Arnaud Delobelle -
Daniel Stutzbach -
Guido van Rossum -
Masklinn -
Raymond Hettinger -
Terry Reedy