[ARROW-9367] [Python] Sorting on pyarrow data structures ?

• Type: Wish
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 3.0.0
• Component/s: Python
• Labels: sort
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/25450
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Athanassios Hatzis
• Created: 08/Jul/20 05:48
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:06
• Resolved: 16/Mar/21 10:20

Description

Hi, I consider sorting a fundamental operation for any in-memory data structures, including those of PyArrow.

It would be nice if pa.array, pa.table, etc had sorting methods but I did not find any. One has to pass sorting indices calculated from some other library, such as numpy, to sort them. Sorting indices could have been calculated directly from PyArrow. Am I missing something here ? That increases significantly complexity for the developer.

Do you have any plans on implementing such a feature in the near future ?