[?] sorting files by modification time.

[Joshua Macy]

Iñigo Serna wrote [about sorting files by mod time]:

> No, you can't do this. If several files have the same modification time,
> last one would overwrite previous ones.
> 
> 
> filenames = os.listdir(folder)
> statdict = {}
> for name in filenames:
>     path = os.path.join(folder, name)
>     modified = os.path.getmtime(path)
>     while statdict.has_key(modified):	# this is the trick:
>         modified += 0.1			# do not allow repeated keys
>     statdict[modified] = name
> 
> keylist = statdict.keys()
> keylist.sort()
> 
> filenames_sorted_bymtime = []
> for k in keylist:
>     filenames_sorted_bymtime.append(statdict[k])
> 


  That works, but loses information.  If you wanted to preserve the 
actual modification times, you could create a list of (mod-time, 
filename) tuples instead of a dictionary, and then just sort that:

filenames = os.listdir(folder)
statlist = []
for name in filenames:
   path = os.path.join(folder, name)
   modified = os.path.getmtime(path)
   statlist.append((modified, name))
statlist.sort()



As an added bonus, files with equal modification times will be sorted 
lexicographically (your algorithm preserves the unpredictable order that 
for name in filenames returns them in).

Joshua