def read(*parts):
    """
    Build an absolute path from *parts* and and return the contents of the
    resulting file.  Assume UTF-8 encoding.
    """
    with codecs.open(os.path.join(HERE, *parts), "rb", "utf-8") as f:
        return f.read()
def sort(cls, dataset, by=[], reverse=False):
        cols = [dataset.get_dimension(d, strict=True).name for d in by]
        return dataset.data.sort_values(by=cols, ascending=not reverse)