On May 29, 3:43 pm, Bryan <bryanjugglercryptograp...@yahoo.com> wrote: > Mark Dickinson wrote: > > N.B. I don't claim any originality for the algorithm; only for the > > implementation: the algorithm is based on an algorithm attributed to > > Robert Floyd, and appearing in Jon Bentley's 'Programming Pearls' book > > Actually it is the sequel, /More Programming Pearls/.
Thanks for the correction. I confess that I've yet to read either book; I'll have to try to track them down. > > (though that algorithm produces a set, so doesn't worry about the > > ordering of the sample). > > Bentley presents a version of the Floyd algorithm that provides random > order, but it requires a set data type with some idea of order, as in > "insert j in s after t". Ah, nice. The dict values, of course, exactly provide the necessary idea of order, so I guess this amounts to pretty much the same thing. -- Mark -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
