Is Python Smart Enough to do Sorting like this?

[shalendra chhabra]

Hey Stephen,
Thanks. I got what you said and by mistake I had typed the order in 
Decreasing, which I needed too.

However, right now I see this interesting problem here on this list of "dont 
bother" which seems interesting.

If one has a string and can this string be assigned to a dictionary and then 
we can apply the sorting methods of dictionary on it.
For example: the information in my itemset can be treated as a string.

itemset{}
itemset=str(key[i])+str(value[i]) #done over a loop and and then some how 
can get everything concatenated

If I am not mistaken the itemset is now a string.
How can I assign this itemset back to a dictionary? Is there any way?
If yes! then we can apply the sort methods for increasing order and for 
decreasing order you have given me the function already.

Please clear my doubt

Thanks
Shalen

>From: Stephen Horne <steve at ninereeds.fsnet.co.uk>
>To: python-list at python.org
>Subject: Re: Is Python Smart Enough to do Sorting like this?
>Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:03:30 +0000
>
>On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 01:26:25 +0000, "shalendra chhabra"
><shalen_itbhu at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Is it possible to order this itemset in an increasing order of key: value
> >with respect to keys. For example: if
> >key4>key2>key3>key1
> >then the resulting ordering should be in such a way:
> >
> >key4:value4, key2: value2,key3:value3>key1: value1
>
>What you seem to be describing is decreasing order of key - the
>highest key value (key4) first, with progressively smaller values at
>later positions.
>
>This is not hard. The only minor annoyance is that, unlike for
>instance a C++ map, Python dictionaries don't naturally iterate in
>sorted order (they use hashing rather than a tree structure, which
>overall is probably neither better nor worse - just different).
>
>Sorting tasks are quite common, so while that are not exactly
>difficult I imagine there's a good guide on the internet somewhere for
>newbies (links anyone?).
>
>In this case, once you have the dictionary of key:value pairs you
>extract a list of keys and sort it appropriately. The default sort is
>in increasing order, so you reverse that to get decreasing order.
>Then, if necessary, you use a list comprehension to get a list of
>(key, value) tuples in the needed order. The list comprehension is
>often redundant, though, as you can normally just iterate the sorted
>keys and read the values from the dictionary when they're needed.
>
>Here is a quick function...
>
>def pairs_by_decreasing_key (p_Dict) :
>   """
>   Takes a dictionary and derives a list of (key, value) tuples
>   in decreasing order of key.
>   """
>   tmp = p_Dict.keys (); tmp.sort (); tmp.reverse ()
>
>   return [(i, p_Dict [i]) for i in tmp]
>
>
>--
>Steve Horne
>
>steve at ninereeds dot fsnet dot co dot uk
>--
>http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list

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