How to sort a list of string ignoring whitespace in python?

Question

Str1=["Josephine","Joseph smith"]

Josephine should come first but due to space Joseph smith comes first.

That's not a duplicate: it shows how to remove whitespace, but not how to use it as a basis for a sort key. — Zero Piraeus, Nov 23 '16 at 11:02

wildwilhelm · Answer 1 · 2017-01-27T14:49:35.283

9

What you're describing is:

>>> Str1 = ['Josephine', 'Joseph smith']
>>> sorted(Str1)
['Joseph smith', 'Josephine']

You can provide a key to list.sort or sorted to make your string comparisons ignore whitespace:

>>> sorted(Str1, key=lambda x: ''.join(x.split()))
['Josephine', 'Joseph smith']

edited Jan 27 '17 at 14:49

answered Nov 23 '16 at 10:56

wildwilhelm

1

A rather convoluted way to remove whitespace, also will replace newline characters which may not be desired, why not just use `replace()`? – Chris_Rands Nov 23 '16 at 11:04
1

@Chris_Rands [whitespace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_character) includes newlines (and tabs), and is what the question explicitly asks to be ignored in the title. – Zero Piraeus Nov 23 '16 at 11:06
@ZeroPiraeus Okay I agree – Chris_Rands Nov 23 '16 at 12:28

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 23 '16 at 10:57

3

You pass in a sort key that replaces all space character with an empty string:

Str1.sort(key=lambda k: k.replace(' ', ''))

answered Nov 23 '16 at 10:57

andres101

neverwalkaloner · Answer 3 · 2016-11-23T11:03:06.437

0

You can do it this way:

l = sorted(l, key=lambda x:x.replace(' ', ''))

edited Nov 23 '16 at 11:03

answered Nov 23 '16 at 10:58

neverwalkaloner

Just `sorted(my_string, key=lambda x: x.replace(' ', ''))` is fine – Moinuddin Quadri Nov 23 '16 at 11:01
@ZeroPiraeus you are right! Edited my answer, thank you! – neverwalkaloner Nov 23 '16 at 11:02

3 Answers3