odd behavior

[Lee Harr]

On 2005-11-11, Kristian Zoerhoff <kristian.zoerhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 Nov 2005 11:34:47 -0800, Greg <gstgeorge at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Forgive me, and be kind, as I am just a newby learning this language
>> out of M.L. Hetland's book.  The following behavior of 2.4.1 seems very
>> strange
>> >>> x = ['aardvark', 'abalone', 'acme', 'add',
>>      'aerate']
>> >>> x.sort(key=len)
>> >>> x
>> ['add', 'acme', 'aerate', 'abalone', 'aardvark']
>> >>> x.sort(reverse=True)
>> >>> x
>> ['aerate', 'add', 'acme', 'abalone', 'aardvark']
>> The function called on line 4, at least to me, should work on x as it
>> was on line 3, not the previously existing x on line 1.  What gives?
>
> The key option defaults to an alphabetic sort *every time* you call
> sort, so if you want to change this, you must call for your sort key
> each time. To do what you want, roll the sorts into one step:
>
>>>> x.sort(key=len, reverse=True)
>>>> x
> ['aardvark', 'abalone', 'aerate', 'acme', 'add']
>
>


... or just reverse it after:

>>> x.sort(key=len)
>>> x.reverse()
>>> x
['aardvark', 'abalone', 'aerate', 'acme', 'add']