[Tutor] sorting question

[Rob Andrews]

I'm trying to think of the best way to go about this one, as the files
I have to sort are *big*.

They're ASCII files with each row consisting of a series of
fixed-length fields, each of which has a corresponding format file.
(To be specific, these files are FirstLogic compatible.)

I'm looking to sort files such that I can produce the 50,000 records
with the highest "score" in a certain field.

A grossly over-simplified example is:

"JohnDoe   3.14123 Anywhere St."
"MarySmith11.03One Jackson Pl. "

------------------------------------------------------------
>>> for x in people: # substituting 'people' for a file of records
	print x[9:14]
	
 3.14
11.03
------------------------------------------------------------

With this in mind, I'm trying to sort the file by the value of the
number in the field represented by x[9:14] in the example here.

I haven't yet figured out a way to apply sort() to this problem,
although I'm certain the failing is my own.

-Rob A.