list.sort(): heaviest item?

[Jeffrey Froman]

Steven Clark wrote:

> If I have a list of items of mixed type, can I put something into it
> such that after a list.sort(), is guaranteed to be at the end of the
> list?

<snip doc excerpt>

> It looks like "None" always ends up at the start ("lightest"), but I
> want the opposite ("heaviest").

I don't know of an object in the standard library that is guaranteed to
be "heaviest", but it is trivial to create one:

>>> class Heaviest(object):
...     def __cmp__(self, other):
...             return 1
...
>>> Heaviest = Heaviest()
>>> L = [tuple(), list(), dict(), Heaviest, str(), int(), None]
>>> L.sort()
>>> L
[None, 0, {}, [], '', (), <__main__.Heaviest object at 0xb7c04a8c>]


Ordering with respect to another object that defines a similar __cmp__
function will still be arbitrary, but maybe you don't have to deal with any
such objects ;-)


Jeffrey