[Tutor] sorting data from multiple arrays

[Kent Johnson]

Jeff Peery wrote:
> ... what is '*' in '*temp'? thanks!

Say you have a function of 3 arguments:
In [1]: def add(a, b, c):
    ...:     return a+b+c

Normally to call it, you just specify the three arguments:
In [2]: add(1, 2, 3)
Out[2]: 6

Suppose the arguments were already in a list, what would you do? You 
can't just pass the list, that is a single argument and you need three:
In [3]: data=[1, 2, 3]
In [4]: add(data)
------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<ipython console>", line 1, in <module>
<type 'exceptions.TypeError'>: add() takes exactly 3 arguments (1 given)

You could unpack the data yourself:
In [5]: a, b, c = data
In [6]: add(a, b, c)
Out[6]: 6

Or you can use the * notation, which basically means, "treat each 
element of this list as a separate argument", or "use this list as the 
argument list directly":
In [7]: add(*data)
Out[7]: 6

If the length of the argument list (data, in the example above) can 
change, manually unpacking the list won't work and the * syntax is the 
only alternative.

Kent

>     Decorate-sort-undecorate
>     (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52234)
>     to the rescue:
> 
>     In [12]: a = [3,2,1,4]
>     In [13]: b = ['hi', 'my','name', 'is']
>     In [14]: c = [5,2,4,2]
>     In [15]: temp = zip(a, b, c)
>     In [16]: temp
>     Out[16]: [(3, 'hi', 5), (2, 'my', 2), (1, 'name', 4), (4, 'is', 2)]
>     In [17]: temp.sort()
>     In [18]: _, b, c = zip(*temp)
>     In [19]: b
>     Out[19]: ('name', 'my', 'hi', 'is')
>     In [20]: c
>     Out[20]: (4, 2, 5, 2)