Python: sort an array of dictionaries with custom comparator?

Question

I have the following Python array of dictionaries:

myarr = [ { \'name\': \'Richard\', \'rank\': 1 },
{ \'name\': \'Reuben\', \'rank\': 4 },
{ \'name\': \'Reece\'         


        

Answer 1

I'm more leaning toward creating a compare function to handle the "0" specifically:

def compare(x,y):
    if x == y:
        return 0
    elif x == 0:
        return 1
    elif y == 0:
        return -1
    else:
        return cmp(x,y)

sorted(myarr, cmp=lambda x,y: compare(x,y), key=lambda x:x['rank'])

However, there are performance penalty on the custom compare function.