List sorting (DSU?)

< hendry> A list of strings I guess is sorted alphabetically with a .sort(). Is there a similar shortcut to sort the list by size of the string? < dotz> hendry: help(list.sort) < dotz> hendry: note the cmpfunc argument.

>>> help(list.sort)

Help on method_descriptor:

sort(...)
L.sort(cmpfunc=None) -- stable sort *IN PLACE*; cmpfunc(x, y) -> -1, 0, 1

Docs are little skimp of details, like:

13:19 < h4ngedm4n> cmp(x,y) -1: x<y 0:x=y 1:x>y iirc

13:19 < Moof> 0 is equal, -1 means x is smaller than y, 1 means x is larger than y

Alternatively: < moshez> dotz: please don’t give silly answers < moshez> hendry: use a schwartzian transform

< moshez> l = [(len(s),s) for s in l] < moshez> l.sort()

< moshez> l = [x[1] for x in l] My code sample:

class Listsort:
def unique(self, list):
    """ Return (sorted) unique elements """
    d = {}
    for x in list:
        d[x] = 1
    subset = d.keys()
    subset.sort(self.bigstrings)
    return subset

def bigstrings(self, x, y):
    """ comparison function to return largest string """

    if len(x) < len(y):
        return 1

    if len(x) > len(y):
        return -1

    if len(x) == len(y):
        return 0


if __name__ == '__main__':
x = Listsort()
l = ['cows', 'apples', 'it', 'bureaucracy']
print x.unique(l)