[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Duncan> If you don't like the tuple then just do the two sorts separately:>>>> lst.sort(key=lambda x: x.imag) >>>> lst.sort(key=lambda x: x.real) ... I tried that. I could have sworn when I read through the output it hadn't retained the order of the real parts. Wait a minute... I sorted by real them by imag. So the trick is to sort by primary sort key last.
This is called radix sorting. It requires that the sort be order preserving, that it preserve the order of items with equal keys. It is an old technique. It was used, for instance, to sort punched cards on a card sorter that sorted cards on one columm at a time. One had to be careful to properly remove and combine the cards after each pass; make one mistake and start over. I once helped someone sort 1000s of student record cards by 6- or 7-digit id.
Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
