strcmp for python or how to sort substrings efficiently (without copy) when building a suffix array

Question

Here\'s a very simple way to build an suffix array from a string in python:

def sort_offsets(a, b):
    return cmp(content[a:], content[b:])

content = \"foobar          


        

Answer 1

The buffer function does not copy the whole string, but creates an object that only references the source string. Using interjay's suggestion, that would be:

suffix_array.sort(key=lambda a: buffer(content, a))