Why are there no ordered dictionaries?

[Ben Finney]

bonono at gmail.com <bonono at gmail.com> wrote:
> [sort by] some other metadata that is not present in the data.
> [...]
> Of course, you may say, just put another column that represent
> this(some reporting programs I have seen do it this way) and that is
> an option but not the only option.

It's a pretty good option, and very commonly used. It's known as the
"Schwartzian transform", or more descriptively, the "Decorate, Sort,
Undecorate" pattern.

    <URL:http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52234>

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Ben Finney