#PYTHON SORT LIST HOW TO#
#PYTHON SORT LIST FULL#

Now follow the given syntax for sorting this list stored in the arr variable in ascending order. LetвЂ™s assume that arr is a list variable. The reverse parameter has a default value as false while the key parameter in only needed when youвЂ™ve to sort according to your own user-defined order. List.sort(reverse=True|False, key=aDefinedFunction)Д«oth of the parameters are actually optional.

#PYTHON SORT LIST FULL#

The full syntax of the sort method is written below. This method will allow you to sort the numerical lists in ascending or descending order and the string-based lists in alphabetical or reverse alphabetical order. The original list is now in alphabetical order.Python Lists offers an inbuilt method sort() that you can always use to sort any list in either ascending or descending order. LetвЂ™s look at an example of using it to alphabetically sort a list of strings. You cannot use it on other iterables like tuple, string, etc. Note that the sort() function works only on lists. That is, it directly modifies the original list. It sorts the list in place and doesnвЂ™t return any value. Using sort() to sort a List in PythonДЄlternatively, you can use the Python list sort() function. For strings with equal lengths, we see that they are present in the order they occur in the original list. The strings in the list are sorted based on their length. For example, if you want to sort the strings in a list based just on their length вЂ“ # create a list You can pass your own custom criteria to the key argument to sort the values. Sort strings using custom comparison criteria

You can see that now the strings are sorted alphabetically irrespective of their case. The result of this function is used to compare the values when sorting. If you want to sort them alphabetically irrespective of the case, you can use the key parameter which is used to specify the function to be applied to each element. This is because uppercase characters have lower Unicode values compared to lowercase characters (remember that we compare the Unicode values starting from the first character to determine the order). You can see that even though alphabetically вЂњMatвЂќ comes after вЂњbatвЂќ it is sorted in before it because it starts with an uppercase letter.

Note that, uppercase characters are considered вЂњsmallerвЂќ than lowercase characters in string comparison. Sort strings in list irrespective of the case You can also specify the order to be reversed.

Here the words вЂњbattleвЂќ and вЂњbatвЂќ start with the same letters but вЂњbattleвЂќ is considered larger than вЂњbatвЂќ due to its length. You can see that returned list contains strings in alphabetical order. LetвЂ™s see the usage of the sorted() function to sort strings in a list in alphabetical order. If the first character is the same, it compares the second character in each string, and so on.

In Python, comparing strings to determine the order works by comparing the Unicode of the first characters in both the strings. By default, it sorts the list in ascending order but you can also sort the list in descending order by passing reverse=True. It returns a new list with the elements in sorted order and doesnвЂ™t modify the original list. The following is its syntax: # sort a list You can also use this function to sort other iterables like tuple, string, etc. You can use the Python built-in sorted() function to sort a list.

#PYTHON SORT LIST HOW TO#

In this tutorial, we will look at how to sort a list of strings in alphabetical order in Python with the help of some examples.

Python sort list