René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"The data model and built-in types references disagree regarding ``sort()``","articleBody":"# Documentation\n\nThe data model and built-in types reference are inconsistent regarding whether `sort()` should be an expected mutable sequence method. This was noted by @serhiy-storchaka during review of #138474.\n\nThe data model, in ['Emulating container types'](https://docs.python.org/dev/reference/datamodel.html#emulating-container-types) states:\n\n\u003e Mutable sequences should provide methods [...] and sort(), like Python standard list objects.\n\nThe built-in types reference, in ['Mutable Sequence Types'](https://docs.python.org/3.12/library/stdtypes.html#mutable-sequence-types) stated[^1]:\n\n\u003e The operations in the following table are defined on mutable sequence types\n\nwith `sort()` not included. Indeed, in `stdtypes.rst`, [`list.sort()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#list.sort) is documented as an 'additional method', beyond the mutable sequence interface.\n\n-----------------------\n\nRelevant history:\n\n* `sort()` was added to the datamodel in 83b2f8ad3ddc340d203bc4e5d8a9765d70974579 (23/7/1998), and with the text effectively unchanged since.\n* `sort()` was removed from the table in `stdtypes.rst` in 273069cf7d79293fa0c2cca7fe6ab386a4e5c02a (20/8/2012).\n* A note that `bytes` (now `bytearray`) objects do not support `sort()` was added to the table in 226878cba507cff4b6ce094063682d0b0b53cbb9 (31/8/2007). Before this, support for `sort()` was unqualified in `stdtypes.rst`.\n\n----------------------\n\nOf the standard library sequence types, the only ones that implement a `sort()` method are `list`, `collections.UserList`, and `multiprocessing.managers.BaseListProxy`.\n\nGiven all of this, I propose that we update the data model to remove the reference to `sort()` as an expected sequence method. I think that this is the most pragmatic solution.\n\n\n[^1]: before the recent PR\n\n\u003c!-- gh-linked-prs --\u003e\n### Linked PRs\n* gh-138563\n* gh-138760\n* gh-140676\n\u003c!-- /gh-linked-prs --\u003e\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/AA-Turner","@type":"Person","name":"AA-Turner"},"datePublished":"2025-09-05T20:53:10.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":1},"url":"https://github.com/138562/cpython/issues/138562"}