Here's a very simple way to build an suffix array from a string in python:
def sort_offsets(a, b):
return cmp(content[a:], content[b:])
content = "foobar baz foo"
suffix_array.sort(cmp=sort_offsets)
print suffix_array
[6, 10, 4, 8, 3, 7, 11, 0, 13, 2, 12, 1, 5, 9]
However, "content[a:]" makes a copy of content, which becomes very inefficient when content gets large. So i wonder if there's a way to compare the two substrings without having to copy them. I've tried to use the buffer-builtin, but it didn't worked.
解决方案
The buffer function does not copy the whole string, but creates an object that only references the source string. Using interjay's suggestion, that would be:
suffix_array.sort(key=lambda a: buffer(content, a))