Should I use a dictionary?

[Gustaf Liljegren]

I have an object type for e-mail messages based on the rfc822 module. After 
picking out some messages from several sources, I want to sort them in 
order of the date property of the message object (as far as I understand, 
everything in this process needs to be kept in memory). Anyway, the problem 
is that I need some hints about how to sort the messages, as they are not 
sorted in way I get them.

One idea I came up with was to put the date property of the message object 
as a key in a dictionary, and let the rest of the message be the value! But 
even if it would work, I think it's ugly. If someone can convince me that 
it's not ugly, or give a better (i.e. faster) solution, I'd be happy.

Regards,

Gustaf Liljegren