sorted or .sort() ?

[Nick Craig-Wood]

Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
>  Peter Bengtsson <peterbe at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > My poor understanding is that the difference between `sorted(somelist,
> > key=lambda x:...)` and `somelist.sort(lambda x,y...)` is that one
> > returns a new list and the other sorts in-place.
> 
>  Yes.
> 
> > Does that mean that .sort() is more efficient and should be favored
> > when you can (i.e. when you don't mind changing the listish object)?
> 
>  No, it means you should choose the version that expresses what you
>  actually want to do.
> 
>  Efficiency of the programmers ??? including the unknown number of
>  programmers who will have to read the code after you write it ??? is in
>  many cases a much more important criterion than efficiency of the CPU.
>  People's time continues to be much more expensive than computer time,
>  after all.

Good advice with one caveat: sorted() was only introduced in python
2.4 so if your code must run on earlier versions then use list.sort()

-- 
Nick Craig-Wood <nick at craig-wood.com> -- http://www.craig-wood.com/nick