CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonsorting
Ron_Pearlyman
Ron_Pearlyman

Reputation: 13

Sorted() not sorting properly

The code i'm working with has a list of lists that contains (moviename, year released, genre, watched or unwatched). I am trying to sort the list by year released to display, however it is not sorting properly

movielist.sort(key=lambda x: x[1])

This is the code i'm trying to run to sort a list of lists by year, but it is not sorting properly.

Output is: 

['Citizen Kane', '1941', 'Drama', 'u']
['Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope', '1977', 'Action', 'w']
['The Fugitive', '1993', 'Drama', 'u']
['Fun with Dick and Jane', '2005', 'Comedy', 'w']
['Persian-Roman War', '557', 'Action', 'u']

when it should be: 

['Persian-Roman War', '557', 'Action', 'u']
['Citizen Kane', '1941', 'Drama', 'u']
['Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope', '1977', 'Action', 'w']
['The Fugitive', '1993', 'Drama', 'u']
['Fun with Dick and Jane', '2005', 'Comedy', 'w']

Upvotes: 1

Views: 190

Answers (2)

Rikigami
Rikigami

Reputation: 63

when you are doing

movielist.sort(key=lambda x: x[1])

It sorts based on string values which does not work in your case

Use this instead

movielist.sort(key=lambda x: int(x[1]))

Hope this Helped

Upvotes: 3

Tim Biegeleisen
Tim Biegeleisen

Reputation: 521073

The issue here is that you are sorting on a text year, and lexicographically, the year 1941 is "before" 557. You may try left padding the year with zeroes to a fixed width of 4:

movielist.sort(key=lambda x: x[1].zfill(4))

With this approach, sorting on the text year works, and would give the following order:

0557
1941
1977
1993
2005

Upvotes: 0

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