John, there's an error in my program, I forgot that list.sort() method
doesn't return the list (it sorts in place). So it should look like:
#!/usr/bin/python
def sortit(fname):
fo = open(fname)
linedict = {}
for line in fo:
key = line[:3]
linedict[key] = line
sortedlines = []
keys = linedict.keys()
keys.sort()
for key in keys:
sortedlines.append(linedict[key])
return sortedlines
if __name__ == '__main__':
sortit('testfile.txt')
MRAB's solution is obviously better, provided you know about Python's
lambda.
Regards,
mk