akindo: > So, it seems I want the best of both worlds: specific indexing using > my own IDs/keys (not just by list element location), sorting and the > ability to start iterating from a specific location.
A sorted associative map may be fit. A data structure based on a search tree, like a red-black tree, etc. The Python std lib doesn't contain such data structure. Do you need to add items to your data structure? Diez has suggested a possible solution. You can keep a copy of the items in a sorted list, but this isn't handy if you have to add and remove items frequently. Or you may be able to find somewhere a sorted associative array data structure (tree-based). Bye, bearophile -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
