On 11 Nov 2005 11:34:47 -0800, Greg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Forgive me, and be kind, as I am just a newby learning this language > out of M.L. Hetland's book. The following behavior of 2.4.1 seems very > strange > >>> x = ['aardvark', 'abalone', 'acme', 'add', > 'aerate'] > >>> x.sort(key=len) > >>> x > ['add', 'acme', 'aerate', 'abalone', 'aardvark'] > >>> x.sort(reverse=True) > >>> x > ['aerate', 'add', 'acme', 'abalone', 'aardvark'] > The function called on line 4, at least to me, should work on x as it > was on line 3, not the previously existing x on line 1. What gives?
The key option defaults to an alphabetic sort *every time* you call sort, so if you want to change this, you must call for your sort key each time. To do what you want, roll the sorts into one step: >>> x.sort(key=len, reverse=True) >>> x ['aardvark', 'abalone', 'aerate', 'acme', 'add'] -- Kristian kristian.zoerhoff(AT)gmail.com zoerhoff(AT)freeshell.org -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
