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My figure has a very large legend, and to make it easier to find each corresponding line, I want to sort the legend by the y value of the line at the last datapoint.

plots[] contains a list of Line2D objects,

labels[] is the corresponding labels to each Line2D object, generated through labels = [plot._label for plot in plots]

I want to sort each/both arrays by plots._y[-1], the value of y at the last point

Bonus points if I can also sort first by _linestyle (a string) and then by the y value.

I am unsure of how to do this well, I wouldn't think it would require a loop, but it might because I am sorting by 2 criteria, one of which will be tricky to deal with (':' and '-' are the values of linestyle). Is there a function that can help me out here?

edit: it just occurred to me that I can generate labels after I sort, so that uncomplicates things a bit. However, I still have to sort plots by each object's linestyle and y[-1] value.

Zak
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  • have a look here, it may help http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5212870/sorting-a-python-list-by-two-criteria – Totem Feb 25 '14 at 21:10

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I believe this may work:

sorted(plots, key = lambda plot :(plot._linestyle, plot._y[-1]))
Totem
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  • Works to spec! Now, I'm not entirely sure this is possible, but within each linestyle category, can I sort by y the opposite way without flipping how linestyle is sorted? – Zak Feb 25 '14 at 21:16
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    So right now, it's sorting `'-'` first and `':'` second. This is what I want. Now within `'-'` and `':'`, items are sorted by the second criteria, `y`. Currently `y` is sorted ascending, I want it to be sorted descending. I've actually just solved it myself, `-plot.y[-1]` works. – Zak Feb 25 '14 at 21:27