[Python-ideas] Allow key='attribute_name' to various sorting functions

[Carl Meyer]

On 04/11/2013 04:24 PM, Ram Rachum wrote:
> I often want to sort objects by an attribute. It's cumbersome to do this:
> 
>     sorted(entries, key=lambda entry: entry.datetime_created)
> 
> Why not allow this instead:
> 
>     sorted(entries, key='datetime_created')

    from operator import attrgetter
    sorted(entries, key=attrgetter('datetime_created'))

You can alias attrgetter to an even shorter name if you like.

Explicit utility functions are better than implicit special-case
behaviors. Why should a string be special-cased to attribute lookup
rather than, say, __getitem__ lookup?

Carl