That completely depends on the objects in question. Compare
temp = all_posters[:] temp.sort() top_five_posters = temp[-5:]
to:
top_five_posters = all_posters.sorted()[-5:]
which became possible only when .sorted() was added to Python 2.4.
I believe you mean "when sorted() was added to Python 2.4":
py> ['d', 'b', 'c', 'a'].sorted() Traceback (most recent call last): File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ? AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'sorted' py> sorted(['d', 'b', 'c', 'a']) ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']
Note that sorted is a builtin function, not a method of a list object. It takes any iterable and creates a sorted list from it. Basically the equivalent of:
def sorted(iterable): result = list(iterable) result.sort() return result
Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list