The Python Oracle

How to sort the letters in a string alphabetically in Python

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Chapters
00:00 Question
00:24 Accepted answer (Score 358)
00:36 Answer 2 (Score 110)
00:59 Answer 3 (Score 38)
01:47 Answer 4 (Score 13)
02:35 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1504...

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Tags
#python #string

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ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 396


You can do:

>>> a = 'ZENOVW'
>>> ''.join(sorted(a))
'ENOVWZ'


ANSWER 2

Score 118


>>> a = 'ZENOVW'
>>> b = sorted(a)
>>> print(b)
['E', 'N', 'O', 'V', 'W', 'Z']

sorted returns a list, so you can make it a string again using join:

>>> c = ''.join(b)

which joins the items of b together with an empty string '' in between each item.

>>> print(c)
'ENOVWZ'


ANSWER 3

Score 42


Sorted() solution can give you some unexpected results with other strings.

List of other solutions:

Sort letters and make them distinct:

>>> s = "Bubble Bobble"
>>> ''.join(sorted(set(s.lower())))
' belou'

Sort letters and make them distinct while keeping caps:

>>> s = "Bubble Bobble"
>>> ''.join(sorted(set(s)))
' Bbelou'

Sort letters and keep duplicates:

>>> s = "Bubble Bobble"
>>> ''.join(sorted(s))
' BBbbbbeellou'

If you want to get rid of the space in the result, add strip() function in any of those mentioned cases:

>>> s = "Bubble Bobble"
>>> ''.join(sorted(set(s.lower()))).strip()
'belou'


ANSWER 4

Score 10


You can use functools.reduce

>>> from functools import reduce
>>> a = 'ZENOVW'
>>> reduce(lambda x,y: x+y, sorted(a))
'ENOVWZ'