Annoying behaviour of the != operator

[Dan Bishop]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
...
> If you were to ask, "which is bigger, 1+2j or 3+4j?" then you
> are asking a question about mathematical size. There is no unique answer
> (although taking the absolute value must surely come close) and the
> expression 1+2j > 3+4j is undefined.
>
> But if you ask "which should come first in a list, 1+2j or 3+4j?" then you
> are asking about a completely different thing. The usual way of sorting
> arbitrary chunks of data within a list is by dictionary order, and in
> dictionary order 1+2j comes before 3+4j because 1 comes before 3.
>
> This suggests that perhaps sort needs a keyword argument "style", one of
> "dictionary", "numeric" or "datetime", which would modify how sorting
> would compare keys.
>
> Perhaps in Python 3.0.

What's wrong with the Python 2.4 approach of

>>> clist = [7+8j, 3+4j, 1+2j, 5+6j]
>>> clist.sort(key=lambda z: (z.real, z.imag))
>>> clist
[(1+2j), (3+4j), (5+6j), (7+8j)]

?