Sorting email in descending order

Question

In reference to my previous question (Solved): Only show certain number of emails in imaplib

So now I can show certain number of emails in my inbox but the problem I'm having now is that I would like to output it in descending order.

It says here: http://pythoncentral.io/how-to-slice-listsarrays-and-tuples-in-python/

>>> a[::-1]
[8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

"And that -1 I snuck in at the end? It means to increment the index every time by -1, meaning it will traverse the list by going backwards."

So im thinking backwards is equal to descending right? I tried to add the -1 on the code that I have already working:

ids = data[0]
id_list = ids.split()

for num in id_list[0:10:-1]:
    rv, data = M.fetch(num, '(RFC822)')
    msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])

    subj = msg['Subject']
    to = msg['To']
    frm = msg['From']
    body = msg.get_payload()

    print subj

But there was no output.. I was expecing

tenth
ninth
eigth
.
.
.
.
second
first

But I didn't get any.. Any help on how I can achieve the output I want?

No backwards does not equal descending sort on an unsorted list. You have to sort the list if you want it sorted. — Two-Bit Alchemist, Aug 22 '16 at 15:36
Possible duplicate of [How do I sort a list of strings in Python?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36139/how-do-i-sort-a-list-of-strings-in-python) — Two-Bit Alchemist, Aug 22 '16 at 15:36

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '16 at 15:39

I would like to thank Max for this solution, now my email is sorted to the most recent

ids = data[0]
id_list = ids.split()

#[0:10] will only output 10 emails
for num in id_list[10::-1]:
    rv, data = M.fetch(num, '(RFC822)')
    msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])

    subj = msg['Subject']
    to = msg['To']
    frm = msg['From']
    body = msg.get_payload()

    print subj

Thank you again to Max! :D

Sorting email in descending order

1 Answers1