Sort elements in list based on length first and alphabetical order second

Question

I have a list with strings. Now, I want to sort the elements in this list based on string length.

proxy_list = ['my', 'list', 'looks', 'like', 'this']

My desired output looks as follows:

desired_output = ['my','like','list','this','looks']

The code below sorts the list based on length, but not on alphabetical order:

print(sorted(proxy_list, key=len))
>>> ['my', 'list', 'like', 'this', 'looks']

How can I sort a list with string based on two things?

`key=lambda s: (len(s), s)`. Sort on length first, on strings second. Strings are sorted alphabetically be default. — hilberts_drinking_problem, Jan 06 '22 at 12:35
Does this answer your question? [Sort a list by multiple attributes?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4233476/sort-a-list-by-multiple-attributes) — Mathias R. Jessen, Jan 06 '22 at 12:39
Since python `sort` is stable, you could also run `sorted(sorted(proxy_list), key=len)`, although this will probably be slower unless the list is already more or less sorted as you want. — hilberts_drinking_problem, Jan 06 '22 at 12:44

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 06 '22 at 12:50

use key argument of sorted function. convert each element to a tuple of priority. here (len(s), s), this means len(s) have more priority to s.

proxy_list = ['my', 'list', 'looks', 'like', 'this']
print(sorted(proxy_list, key=lambda s: (len(s), s)))
#>>> ['my', 'like', 'list', 'this', 'looks']

Sort elements in list based on length first and alphabetical order second

1 Answers1

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