I have an array of string-numbers, like:
numbers = ['10', '8', '918', '101010']
When I use sorted(numbers), I get them sorted lexicographically, e.g. '8' > '17'.
How can I iterate over the strings sorted according to the number value?
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5 Answers
You can use the built-in sorted() function with a key int to map each item in your list to an integer prior to comparison:
numbers = ['10', '8', '918', '101010']
numbers = sorted(numbers, key=int)
print(numbers)
Output
['8', '10', '918', '101010']
Using this method will output a list of strings as desired.
1 Comment
kuch11
looks like a great and a very elegant solution
If you want to keep as strings you can pass int as the key to list.sort which will sort the original list:
numbers = ['10', '8', '918', '101010']
numbers.sort(key=int)
answered Mar 1, 2016 at 16:58
Padraic Cunningham
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Comments
Here is how I like to do it, which is very fast.
print(sorted(sorted(numbers), key=len))
1 Comment
John
It would be good to explain why you need to use sorted() twice.
all elements types are string,
>>> x=['4', '5', '29', '54', '4', '0', '-214', '542', '-64', '1', '-3', '6', '-6']
>>> max(x)
'6'
It "orders" the words alphabetically and returns the one that is at the bottom of the alphabetic list
Few more examples:
>>> list1 = ['kyle', 'dhamu']
>>> max(list1)
'kyle'
returns kyle because k is after d
Also remember from python3.7 you cannot mix strings and integers to use max function. Below is the example
>>> mix_list = ['my', 'name', 'is', 1 ]
>>> max(mix_list)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: '>' not supported between instances of 'int' and 'str'
