python STL?

[xam]

std::sort - works on any well-ordered object collection (you just define
your own operator< if you need to sort based on some weird criteria)

"Dave Brueck" <dave at pythonapocrypha.com> wrote in message
news:mailman.747.1068842483.702.python-list at python.org...
> > being recently introduced to the joys of programming in a powerful
> > dynamic language (go snake!) I periodically rethink which parts of C++ I
> > still miss. One thing I really enjoy is the generics of C++ - i think
> > they are the single strong benefit of a strongly typed system. I was
> > wondering about the possibility of implementing STL-like algorithms in
> > Python and the one thing that I cannot think of doing without a kludge
> > is the object comparsion that so much of STL relies on, which in turn
> > relies on types and function(<) overloading. Is there a way to implement
> > something similar in python (short of multimethods?). How does the
> > python dictionary object allow arbitrary key types? Is in internally
> > using the references' addresses to impose the tree ordering?
> > thanks,
> > max.
>
> Hi Max,
>
> Could you give a more specific example of what you miss?
>
> -Dave
>