Fwd: Sorting Countries by Region

[Sergio Correia]

About the sort:

Check this (also on http://pastebin.com/f12b5b6ca )

def make_regions():

    # Values you provided
    EU = ["Austria","Belgium", "Cyprus","Czech Republic",
    "Denmark","Estonia", "Finland"]
    NA = ["Canada", "United States"]
    AP = ["Australia", "China", "Hong Kong", "India", "Indonesia",
    "Japan"]
    regions = {'European Union':EU, 'North America':NA, 'Asia Pacific':AP}

    ans = {}
    for reg_name, reg in regions.items():
        for cou in reg:
            ans[cou] = reg_name
    return ans

def cmp_region(cou1, cou2):
    ans = cmp(regions[cou1], regions[cou2])
    if ans: # If the region is the same, sort by country
        return cmp(cou1, cou2)
    else:
        return ans

regions = make_regions()
some_countries = ['Austria', 'Canada', 'China', 'India']

print 'Old:', some_countries
some_countries.sort(cmp_region)
print 'New:', some_countries


Why that code?
Because the first thing I want is a dictionary where the key is the
name of the country and the value is the region. Then, I just make a
quick function that compares considering the region and country.
Finally, I sort.

Btw, the code is just a quick hack, as it can be improved -a lot-.


About the rest of your code:
- martyw's example is much more useful than you think. Why? because
you can just iterate across your document, adding the values you get
to the adequate object property. That is, instead of using size or
pop, use the variables you are interested in.

Best, and good luck with python,
Sergio

On Nov 16, 2007 5:15 PM,  <patrick.waldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Great, this is very helpful.  I'm new to Python, so hence the
> inefficient or nonsensical code!
>
> >
> > 2) I would suggest using countries.sort(...) or sorted(countries,...),
> > specifying cmp or key options too sort by region instead.
> >
>
> I don't understand how to do this.  The countries.sort() lists
> alphabetically and I tried to do a lambda x,y: cmp() type function,
> but it doesn't sort correctly.  Help with that?
>
> For martyw's example, I don't need to get any sort of population
> info.  I'm actually getting the number of various types of documents.
> So the entry is like this:
>
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Additives  Color
> Additives               1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Additives  Flavors                 1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Additives
> General                 6
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Additives  labeling                1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Additives  Prohibited
> Additives       1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Contact    Cellulose               1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Contact    Food
> Packaging               1
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Contact    Plastics                4
> Argentina       Food and Consumer Products      Food Contact
> Waxes                   1
> Belize
> etc...
>
> So I'll need to add up all the entries for Food Additives and Food
> contacts, the other info like Color Additives isn't important.
>
> So I will have an output like this
>           Food Additives    Food Contact
> Argentina     10                7
> Belize
> etc...
>
> Thanks so much for the help!
> --
>
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>