[Python-ideas] Allow key='attribute_name' to various sorting functions

[Ram Rachum]

On Friday, April 12, 2013 1:35:20 AM UTC+3, Carl Meyer wrote:

> On 04/11/2013 04:24 PM, Ram Rachum wrote: 
> > I often want to sort objects by an attribute. It's cumbersome to do 
> this: 
> > 
> >     sorted(entries, key=lambda entry: entry.datetime_created) 
> > 
> > Why not allow this instead: 
> > 
> >     sorted(entries, key='datetime_created') 
>
>     from operator import attrgetter 
>     sorted(entries, key=attrgetter('datetime_created')) 
>
> You can alias attrgetter to an even shorter name if you like. 
>

That's still cumbersome in my opinion.
 

>
> Explicit utility functions are better than implicit special-case 
> behaviors. Why should a string be special-cased to attribute lookup 

rather than, say, __getitem__ lookup? 
>

Right, these are options too. I'd guess that attribute lookup is more 
common, but maybe I'm wrong.
 

>
> Carl 
> _______________________________________________ 
> Python-ideas mailing list 
> Python... at python.org <javascript:> 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-ideas 
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20130411/7a49cef1/attachment.html>