On 2005-11-11, Kristian Zoerhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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'] > >
... or just reverse it after: >>> x.sort(key=len) >>> x.reverse() >>> x ['aardvark', 'abalone', 'aerate', 'acme', 'add'] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
