[python] How to sort a list of lists by a specific index of the inner list?

I have a list of lists. For example,

[
[0,1,'f'],
[4,2,'t'],
[9,4,'afsd']
]

If I wanted to sort the outer list by the string field of the inner lists, how would you do that in python?

This question is related to python sorting

The answer is


More easy to understand (What is Lambda actually doing):

ls2=[[0,1,'f'],[4,2,'t'],[9,4,'afsd']]
def thirdItem(ls):
    #return the third item of the list
    return ls[2]
#Sort according to what the thirdItem function return 
ls2.sort(key=thirdItem)

array.sort(key = lambda x:x[1])

You can easily sort using this snippet, where 1 is the index of the element.


I think lambda function can solve your problem.

old_list = [[0,1,'f'], [4,2,'t'],[9,4,'afsd']]

#let's assume we want to sort lists by last value ( old_list[2] )
new_list = sorted(old_list, key=lambda x: x[2])

#Resulst of new_list will be:

[[9, 4, 'afsd'], [0, 1, 'f'], [4, 2, 't']]

Sorting a Multidimensional Array execute here

arr=[[2,1],[1,2],[3,5],[4,5],[3,1],[5,2],[3,8],[1,9],[1,3]]



arr.sort(key=lambda x:x[0])
la=set([i[0] for i in Points])

for i in la:
    tempres=list()
    for j in arr:
        if j[0]==i:
            tempres.append(j[1])

    for j in sorted(tempres,reverse=True):
        print(i,j)

in place

>>> l = [[0, 1, 'f'], [4, 2, 't'], [9, 4, 'afsd']]
>>> l.sort(key=lambda x: x[2])

not in place using sorted:

>>> sorted(l, key=lambda x: x[2])

Like this:

import operator
l = [...]
sorted_list = sorted(l, key=operator.itemgetter(desired_item_index))

**old_list = [[0,1,'f'], [4,2,'t'],[9,4,'afsd']]
    #let's assume we want to sort lists by last value ( old_list[2] )
    new_list = sorted(old_list, key=lambda x: x[2])**

correct me if i'm wrong but isnt the 'x[2]' calling the 3rd item in the list, not the 3rd item in the nested list? should it be x[2][2]?


Itemgetter lets you to sort by multiple criteria / columns:

sorted_list = sorted(list_to_sort, key=itemgetter(2,0,1))

Make sure that you do not have any null or NaN values in the list you want to sort. If there are NaN values, then your sort will be off, impacting the sorting of the non-null values.

Check out Python: sort function breaks in the presence of nan


multiple criteria can also be implemented through lambda function

sorted_list = sorted(list_to_sort, key=lambda x: (x[1], x[0]))