And now, for something complete different (aka OT): Alex Martelli (Re: space-efficient top-N algorithm)

[David Garamond]

Okay, I haven't been reading comp.lang.python for weeks, and the post 
that I'm replying to is the first one I see coming from Alex in about a 
couple of months.

So I went to groups.google.com trying to find out when Alex started 
actively posting again. And then I found some pretty interesting things 
;-) Among others, the fact that Alex is going to write another book! O 
goodie. Makes me ashamed that I haven't got myself a copy of Python 
Cookbook. (Ironically, I had been more curious about Ruby for the last 
several weeks that I spent the better time buying and reading The Ruby 
Way instead.)

Good to have you back, Alex!

Belatedly,
-- 
dave

Alex Martelli wrote:
> Either I misread David's problem, or you did.  What I'm reading
> is that David wants to COUNT how many times each item occurs (and
> keep the N items that occur most often).  How would "ordering while
> reading" etc help him?