Illuminating Python

[Jimmy Retzlaff]

Paddy McCarthy (paddy3118 at netscape.net) wrote:
> As a counter to a thread that just asked for an obfuscated Python
>contest, I looked up the antonyms and would like to propose that
>Pythonistas should rather engage in an 'Illuminating Python' contest.
>
>The Idea being to submit working examples of Python code that
>illuminate a concept, algorithm, idea, or Python programming itself,
>to other programmers, not neccessarily Python programmers.
...

The Python Cookbook does a very good job of this. Just last night I came across something that I found quite beautiful by Sébastien Keim, especially when adapted for Python 2.3 by Raymond Hettinger. It is essentially a lazy merge-sort. In an application of mine it saved me a good deal of RAM and time (both development and runtime).

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/141934

Jimmy