alwayssortedlist (was Re: On PEP 322 (ireverse))

[Alex Martelli]

Bengt Richter wrote:
   ...
>>Perfectly right.  If you DO want a listoid container that keeps its
>>elements sorted, that's not hard to make for yourself.  There are
   ...
> No comments on the heapq module?

It can often offer a good _alternative_ to "a listoid container that keeps
its elements sorted" -- keeping them as a heap is cheaper than keeping them
sorted.  But "if you DO want" them sorted, so that at any time accessing
mycontainer[x] gives me the x-th smallest item in mycontainer, heapq isn't
gonna be very effective.

There are many good alternatives to "keeping the elements sorted", and
heapq may well help implement some of them, but I wasn't discussing the
alternatives -- just the implementation strategies under the assumption
that the specs DO call for "always sorted".


Alex