Python Essentials

Three ways to sort a sequence

Python offers us three common approaches to the general problem of sorting a list of complex items.

• We can sort with the sorted() generator function. This will duplicate an object as part of sorting.
• We can sort a list with its sort() method and a key function. This will mutate the list into the requested order.
• We can create an intermediate sequence of objects which can be sorted easily. This is sometimes called the wrap-sort-unwrap design pattern.

In order to look at each of these in some detail, we need a collection of complex objects which we can sort. We'll use a simple dataset based on a case study in the NIST Engineering Statistics Handbook, section 7.1.6. See http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook for more information. ...