[Python-Dev] Re: timsort?

[Guido van Rossum]

> 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/)