Sorting a list in Python

problem

You have a list of items in Python and you wish to sort them, e.g. put them in ascending order. If we assume we have a list of numbers, that would be from the lowest to the greatest (ascending), or vice versa (descending).

SOLUTION

Let’s assume we have the following list of integers.

sorting.py

				
					numbers = [1,90,-22,891,87,44,22,2,4,3,2,1,0]

In order to sort the list, we can simply use the built-in function sort() as follows:

sorting.py

				
					numbers.sort()

This will sort the items inside the list and update the list. It will not return a new list but will affect the current list.

So if we now print the list we can see the items are sorted in ascending order.

sorting.py

				
					numbers = [1,90,-22,891,87,44,22,2,4,3,2,1,0]
numbers.sort()
print(numbers)

output

SORTING IN DESCENDING ORDER

Now, if we wish to sort the items of a list in descending order, i.e. from the greatest to the lowest, we can simply do it by passing a boolean parameter to the sort() function as follows:

sorting.py

				
					numbers.sort(reverse=True)

If we go and print it now:

sorting.py

				
					numbers.sort(reverse=True)
print(numbers)

output

reversing items

Now, if we wish to simply reverse the order of the items in the list we can use the reverse() function as follows:

sorting.py

				
					items = ['one','two','three']
items.reverse()

It will reverse all the items in the list. If we go and print it now:

sorting.py

				
					print(items)

output

conclusion

In this post we saw how simple it is to sort a list of data in Python. We can do both orders ascending and descending order out of the box.

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Ellion

Professional IT consultant, writer, programmer enthusiast interested in all sorts of coding.
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