On Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:45:31 -0500, Roy Smith wrote: > As another example, consider a list of items being juggled: > > [RubberChicken(), ChainSaw(), Canteloupe()] > > I could go through contortions to find some common subclass for these > items, but the whole *point* is that they're not of the same type. And > making a list of them is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Absolutely, and Python 3 does not prevent you from making a list of them. However, sorting them is *not* a reasonable thing to do, just like summing them is not a reasonable thing to do, and Python 3 does prevent you from sorting (or summing) them without extra work. If you've been relying on Python 2.x's "take a guess and hope it works" heuristic for sorting uncomparable types, this will come across as a nuisance. Sorry. I'm afraid you only have two choices in Python 3: (1) find some way to avoid sorting such data; or (2) bite the bullet and spend the time required to define your own ordering relationships between types. After all, you can sort by *anything* once you give Python an appropriate key function. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
