list.sort(cmpfunc) question

Aahz Maruch aahz at panix.com
Fri Mar 16 09:53:46 EST 2001


In article <m1ae6lg5qt.fsf at pclabs188.labs.trema.com>,
Harri Pasanen  <harri at trema.com> wrote:
>
>The list.sort(cmp) docs for Python 2.0 state:
>
>   The sort() method takes an optional argument specifying a
>   comparison function of two arguments (list items) which should
>   return -1, 0 or 1 depending on whether the first argument is
>   considered smaller than, equal to, or larger than the second
>   argument.

Note that "should" carefully.  The current implementation of sort() only
checks for a negative value, but that's not a behavior that should be
relied on in your coding.  You can be sure that any anamolies in the
behavior of cmp() will be fixed if the sort() algorithm ever changes.
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