Insert an item into sorted list in Python

Question

I'm creating a class where one of the methods inserts a new item into the sorted list. The item is inserted in the corrected (sorted) position in the sorted list. I'm not allowed to use any built-in list functions or methods other than [], [:], +, and len though. This is the part that's really confusing to me.

What would be the best way in going about this?

Solution 1

Use the insort function of the bisect module:

import bisect 
a = [1, 2, 4, 5] 
bisect.insort(a, 3) 
print(a)

Output

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5] 

Solution 2

Hint 1: You might want to study the Python code in the bisect module.

Hint 2: Slicing can be used for list insertion:

>>> s = ['a', 'b', 'd', 'e']
>>> s[2:2] = ['c']
>>> s
['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

Solution 3

You should use the bisect module. Also, the list needs to be sorted before using bisect.insort_left

It's a pretty big difference.

>>> l = [0, 2, 4, 5, 9]
>>> bisect.insort_left(l,8)
>>> l
[0, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9]

timeit.timeit("l.append(8); l = sorted(l)",setup="l = [4,2,0,9,5]; import bisect; l = sorted(l)",number=10000)
    1.2235019207000732

timeit.timeit("bisect.insort_left(l,8)",setup="l = [4,2,0,9,5]; import bisect; l=sorted(l)",number=10000)
    0.041441917419433594

Solution 4

I'm learning Algorithm right now, so i wonder how bisect module writes. Here is the code from bisect module about inserting an item into sorted list, which uses dichotomy:

def insort_right(a, x, lo=0, hi=None):
    """Insert item x in list a, and keep it sorted assuming a is sorted.
    If x is already in a, insert it to the right of the rightmost x.
    Optional args lo (default 0) and hi (default len(a)) bound the
    slice of a to be searched.
    """

    if lo < 0:
        raise ValueError('lo must be non-negative')
    if hi is None:
        hi = len(a)
    while lo < hi:
        mid = (lo+hi)//2
        if x < a[mid]:
            hi = mid
        else:
            lo = mid+1
    a.insert(lo, x)

Solution 5

This is a possible solution for you:

a = [15, 12, 10]
b = sorted(a)
print b # --> b = [10, 12, 15]
c = 13
for i in range(len(b)):
    if b[i] > c:
        break
d = b[:i] + [c] + b[i:]
print d # --> d = [10, 12, 13, 15]

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