В Python 2.6 есть слияние в heapq, но он не поддерживает пользовательские функции cmp / key
def merge(*iterables):
'''Merge multiple sorted inputs into a single sorted output.
Similar to sorted(itertools.chain(*iterables)) but returns a generator,
does not pull the data into memory all at once, and assumes that each of
the input streams is already sorted (smallest to largest).
>>> list(merge([1,3,5,7], [0,2,4,8], [5,10,15,20], [], [25]))
[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10, 15, 20, 25]
'''
_heappop, _heapreplace, _StopIteration = heappop, heapreplace, StopIteration
h = []
h_append = h.append
for itnum, it in enumerate(map(iter, iterables)):
try:
next = it.next
h_append([next(), itnum, next])
except _StopIteration:
pass
heapify(h)
while 1:
try:
while 1:
v, itnum, next = s = h[0] # raises IndexError when h is empty
yield v
s[0] = next() # raises StopIteration when exhausted
_heapreplace(h, s) # restore heap condition
except _StopIteration:
_heappop(h) # remove empty iterator
except IndexError:
return