strings and sort()

[Paul Rubin]

caljason76 at yahoo.com (Jason) writes:
> > In Python, that's considered immoral--it puts you in danger of
> > forgetting that the sort operation modifies the list that you use it
> > on.  For example, if you say
> > 
> >    a = b.sort()
> > 
> > expecting to get a sorted copy of b without clobbering b, you'd get
> > a rude surprise.
> 
> I still think that the convenience of having sort() return the list
> far outweighs the cost.  People would only get bit once, maybe twice,
> before they learned the behavior of sort.

I tend to agree with you on this, though I'd have preferred that sort
return the list but be called nsort instead of sort, like in Common Lisp.

> I like Python, but the biggest problem I have with the language right
> now is what low code density it has at times.

Agreed on that too.