dictionary issue (and maybe PEP ... depending on the answer)

[Manuel Garcia]

Cheap trick for 1-based lists, just have an extra 'None' in the 0th
position:

    _month_names = [
        None,
        'January',
        'February',
        'March',
        'April',
        'May',
        'June',
        'July',
        'August',
        'September',
        'October',
        'November',
        'December', ]

Steven Taschuk's code is the most general technique:

    months = [(1, 'January'),
              (2, 'February'),
              # ...
             ]
    monthdict = dict(months)
    monthnames = [name for number, name in months]

Trivial to write a function:

    def sorted_keys(dict0):
        newlist = dict0.keys()[:]
        newlist.sort()
        return newlist

    print [_months[i] for i in sorted_keys(_months)]

The reason Python doesn't have a 'return a sorted copy'
(non-destructive) built-in method for lists is that the fastest
sorting algorithms are all 'in-place' (destructive).  Python has as a
rule "there is only one way to do it", so the 'in-place' sort was
chosen as the only built-in method.  As you can see above, it is easy
to write your own 'non-destructive' sort.

The reason that list0.sort() returns 'None' when used in an
expression, is so that you will never use it in an expression!  The
sort's 'in-place' behavior is thus made explicit.

Manuel