As an FYI, nosferatu-man's and my solutions are better than S. Carton's, but require Python 2.4. The "key" parameter to sort/sorted does a "Decorate-Sort-Undecorate"[1] automatically, whereas the ...

Python's saving grace can be found within the original premise above: all other things being equal, shorter code is more likely to be bug-free. When you combine Python's dynamic typing with its ...