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How to sort a list in Python
In this post we will discuss how to sort list in Python.
There are mainly two ways to sort a list in Python.
sorted functionsort method This sort the given list and generate a new list, which means existing list won't be modified.
In [1]: numbers = [23, 42, 12, 121, 45, 9, 8]
In [2]: sorted(numbers)
Out[2]: [8, 9, 12, 23, 42, 45, 121]
In [3]: numbers
Out[3]: [23, 42, 12, 121, 45, 9, 8]As you can see in the above example
Out[3] has the same numbers list. This method applies the sorting on the list and updates the existing list. This is called in place sorting.
In [4]: numbers.sort()
In [5]: numbers
Out[5]: [8, 9, 12, 23, 42, 45, 121]sorted and sort methods takes an extra parameter called key. Using this key param we can control the sorting. Example:
Solution:
names = ['Bob', 'Charles', 'James']. Let's say we want to sort the above list of names based on length of the each time. Solution:
In [7]: sorted(names, key=len)
Out[7]: ['Bob', 'James', 'Charles']We can pass any function we want to this
key. Let me know which method you like in the comments. If you like this content consider following me. 25