Support '<' comparision for some blob objects

[googleapis]

Support '<' comparision for some blob objects

[tseaver]

As I noted on your PR, perhaps it would make sense to allow sorting objects across buckets. @frankyn, WDYT?

[frankyn]

Hi @bboe,

Apologies on the delay. How many objects do you have in your bucket? I'd prefer we not support this in the GCS library because list_blobs() may be called on a bucket with millions of objects. I think this is better suited in external project code rather than in the Python library.

I'm open to discussing this more, but want to be careful with what the library supports long-term.

[bboe]

@frankyn thanks for the response. Yes, sorting millions of objects wouldn't be ideal.

Would it be possible to update the documentation to mention that list_blobs is guaranteed to return items sorted by key (assuming that's actually true)?

[frankyn]

Reaching out to the backend service teams and will get back to you.

As long as I've used GCS, objects are listed in lexicographical order, but want to confirm because it's a strong statement and want to be careful.

[frankyn]

Hi @bboe, confirmed with backend team that this is true and not documented appropriately.

This is being resolved by Technical Writers internally and closing this issue.
Thanks for your patience @bboe!

[bboe]

Thanks for following up @frankyn. I appreciate it.