Newbie Questions: Swithing from Perl to Python

[Roy Smith]

In article <bnfmnv$fqd$1 at panix3.panix.com>, aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) 
wrote:

> In article <roy-D86C06.22163525102003 at reader1.panix.com>,
> Roy Smith  <roy at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> >My personal opinion is that you should be able to do the simplier:
> >
> >for key in myDict.keys().sort()
> >   print key
> >
> >but unfortunately, sort doesn't work like that.  It sorts the list 
> >in-place and does NOT return the sorted list.
> 
> Yup.  Guido doesn't want you copying the list each time you sort; it's
> easy enough to make your own copy function.  Nevertheless, it appears
> likely that 2.4 will grow list.sorted() (yes, a static method on the
> list type).

What do you mean by "a static method on the list type"?  Will I be able 
to do:

   for key in myDict.keys().sorted():
      print key

and get what I expect?  If so, then I think that's the behavior that 
most people have found wanting in the current implementation and thus 
will make a lot of people happy.  It certainly will make me happy :-)

If that's what you're talking about, there's an obvious downside, which 
is that now we'll have list.sort() and list.sorted() which do two 
different things.  This will be confusing.

Is there a PEP on this I could read?  A quick look at the PEP index 
didn't show anything that looked appropos.

I certainly understand the efficiency aspects of in-place sorting, but 
this has always seemed like premature optimization to me.  Most of the 
time (at least in the code I write), the cost of an extra copy is 
inconsequential.  I'll be happy to burn a few thousand CPU cycles if it 
lets me avoid an intermediate assignment or a couple of extra lines of 
code.  When things get too slow, then is the time to do some profiling 
and figure out where I can speed things up.