Xah Lee wrote: > On Aug 12, 12:15 pm, Raymond Hettinger <pyt...@rcn.com> wrote: >> * The reason for implementing the key= parameter had nothing to do >> with limitations of Python's compiler. Instead, it was inspired by >> the >> decorate-sort-undecorate pattern. > > The decorate-sort-undecorate pattern is a compiler limitation, for > most of today's langs. I'm not sure, but i think some of the fancy > functional langs automatically detect such and optimize it away, to > various degrees.
You mean people use that pattern as a fast alternative in languages where user-defined functions are very slow, like Python and Mathematica? -- Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd. http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
