[Python-ideas] a sorting protocol dunder method?

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2017 19:37:02 +0000
Barry Scott <barry at barrys-emacs.org> wrote:
> I wondered what the performance would be and tested the following code:
> 
[...]
> 
> it outputs this for my with python 3.6.0
> 
> 10000
> key 0.010628s  10000 calls
>  lt 0.053690s 119886 calls
> 
> It seems that providing a key is ~5 times faster the depending on __lt__.
> (I even used a short circuit to se if __lt__ could beat key).

Thanks for taking the time to write a benchmark.  I'm not surprised
by the results (and your __lt__ method isn't even complicated: the gap
could be very much wider).  There is more to Python performance than
aggregate big-O algorithmic complexity.

Regards

Antoine.