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

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Chapters
00:00 Question
00:28 Accepted answer (Score 393)
00:51 Answer 2 (Score 243)
01:07 Answer 3 (Score 97)
01:22 Answer 4 (Score 21)
01:37 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4174...

Accepted answer links:
[itemgetter]: http://docs.python.org/library/operator....

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Tags
#python #sorting

#avk47

ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 399

This is a job for itemgetter

>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>> L=[[0, 1, 'f'], [4, 2, 't'], [9, 4, 'afsd']]
>>> sorted(L, key=itemgetter(2))
[[9, 4, 'afsd'], [0, 1, 'f'], [4, 2, 't']]

It is also possible to use a lambda function here, however the lambda function is slower in this simple case

ANSWER 2

Score 259

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])

ANSWER 3

Score 100

Itemgetter lets you to sort by multiple criteria / columns:

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

ANSWER 4

Score 21

multiple criteria can also be implemented through lambda function

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