Hi All,

On Jul 7, 2005, at 2:55 PM, Mario Ruggier wrote:

>
> Shall I consider hashing the keys myself? I am not sure what the
> implications are to my code...
>
> mario

A bit outta' left-field here, and carrying a few assumptions about
Mario's original application, but instead of writing a hash table in
Python, what is the stuff that Python's built-in sorting mechanisms
are made of?  i.e. somelist.sort(compare_function)

It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately- as this
knowledge may help someone decide when to simply use python builtins,
and when to get down and dirty implementing sorting/searching
algorythms- (skiplists, hash tables, b-trees, various merge-sorts-
implimented in Python/C/whatever...)

I thought this question would be relevant here- as this is core to
working with any ODB- SQL DB's abstract these routines into various
SQL calls, analagous to general documentation/knowledge of searching/
sorting schemes in ODB use.

Thanks!

Best,
..ike

--
PS- some relevant(?) urls on the subject:
http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/sorting/sorting.html
http://www.python.org/tim_one/000398.html