Sorting Countries by Region

[patrick.waldo at gmail.com]

Hi all,

I'm analyzing some data that has a lot of country data.  What I need
to do is sort through this data and output it into an excel doc with
summary information.  The countries, though, need to be sorted by
region, but the way I thought I could do it isn't quite working out.
So far I can only successfully get the data alphabetically.

Any ideas?

import xlrd
import pyExcelerator

def get_countries_list(list):
    countries_list=[]
    for country in countries:
        if country not in countries_list:
            countries_list.append(country)

EU = ["Austria","Belgium", "Cyprus","Czech Republic",
"Denmark","Estonia", "Finland"]
NA = ["Canada", "United States"]
AP = ["Australia", "China", "Hong Kong", "India", "Indonesia",
"Japan"]
Regions_tot = {'European Union':EU, 'North America':NA, 'Asia
Pacific':AP,}

path_file = "c:\\1\country_data.xls"
book = xlrd.open_workbook(path_file)
Counts = book.sheet_by_index(1)
countries= Counts.col_values(0,start_rowx=1, end_rowx=None)

get_countries_list(countries)

wb=pyExcelerator.Workbook()
matrix = wb.add_sheet("matrix")

n=1
for country in unique_countries:
    matrix.write(n,1, country)
    n = n+1

wb.save('c:\\1\\matrix.xls')