Python in a Nutshell

Name

strxfrm

Synopsis

strxfrm(str)

Returns a string sx such that the built-in comparison (e.g., by cmp) of strings so transformed is equivalent to calling locale.strcoll on the original strings. strxfrm lets you use the decorate-sort-undecorate (DSU) idiom for sorts that involve locale-conformant string comparisons. However, if all you need is to sort a list of strings in a locale-conformant way, strcoll’s simplicity can make it faster. The following example shows two ways of performing such a sort; in this case, the simple variant is often faster than the DSU one:

import locale
# simpler and often faster
def locale_sort_simple(list_of_strings):
    list_of_strings.sort(locale.strcoll)
# less simple and often slower
def locale_sort_DSU(list_of_strings):
    auxiliary_list = [(locale.strxfrm(s),s) for s in 
                                        list_of_strings]
    auxiliary_list.sort( )
    list_of_strings[:] = [s for junk, s in auxiliary_list]