sorting with expensive compares?

[gene tani]

Dan Stromberg wrote:
> Hi folks.
>
> Python appears to have a good sort method, but when sorting array elements
> that are very large, and hence have very expensive compares, is there some
> sort of already-available sort function that will merge like elements into
> a chain, so that they won't have to be recompared as many times?
>
> Thanks!

might be simpler to memoize  cmp(), look in online cookbook or
something like this decorator

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-October/303035.html
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/