Re: Baby X is bor nagain

On 18/06/2024 23:49, Keith Thompson wrote:

Malcolm McLean <malcolm.arthur.mclean@gmail.com> writes:
[...]

And it didn't take long to get Python to sort the list alphabetically,
but there seemed no way in to the sort comparision function
itself. And I had to give up.

 <OT>
https://docs.python.org/3/library/functions.html#sorted
https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#list.sort
</OT>
 

key specifies a function of one argument that is used to extract a comparison key from each element in iterable (for example, key=str.lower). The default value is None (compare the elements directly).
You see the problem. I can sort on any field. I can sort alphaetically upwards and downwards. But I don't want to do that. I want to use a non-alphabetical comaprison function on two fields, and I need to specify that myself, because it's impossible that it is available anywhere. And that is to sort alphalbetically, except where the strings match except for an emedded "_L_" or "_D_" where the string wth the embedded "L" shoud be treated as closer to A than the string with the emebdded "_D_".
And I'm sure there is some way to achiev e this. But in C, it s achieved simply by declaring that qsort takes a function pointer to user-supplied code.
--
Check out my hobby project.
http://malcolmmclean.github.io/babyxrc