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How to sort a list of tuples

Craig Ringer craig at postnewspapers.com.au
Fri Nov 19 05:53:57 EST 2004 
On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 18:22, Valkyrie wrote:
> I have a list of tuples, and one of the fields in the tuple is score. So how can
> I sort the list by the score?

Assuming the score field is index 1 of each tuple:

def cmp(a,b):
    if   a[1] < b[1]:
        return -1
    elif a[1] > b[1]:
        return 1
    else:
        return 0

my_tuple_list.sort(cmp)

(technically the elifs could be ifs, and the final else could be omitted
in favour of just 'return 0', but for clarity the above is IMO best).

see 'help(list.sort)' for more information.

To whoever added this fantastic feature, thanks and more thanks. It's
saved me so much work at times that it's just crazy.

--
Craig Ringer
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