pythonic way to sort

[Boris Borcic]

Jay Parlar wrote:
> 
> On May 4, 2006, at 12:12 AM, micklee74 at hotmail.com wrote:
> [...]

> Assume that you have the lines in a list called 'lines', 
> as follows:
> 
> lines = [
>    "1SOME STRING      ~ABC~12311232432D~20060401~00000000",
>    "3SOME STRING      ~ACD~14353453554G~20060401~00000000",
>    "2SOME STRING      ~DEF~13534534543C~20060401~00000000"]
> 
> 
> The more traditional way would be to define your own comparison function:
> 
> def my_cmp(x,y):
>     return cmp( x.split("~")[1], y.split("~")[1])
> 
> lines.sort(cmp=my_cmp)
> 
> 
> The newer, faster way, would be to define your own key function:
> 
> def my_key(x):
>     return x.split("~")[1]
> 
> lines.sort(key=my_key)

and if the data is in a file rather than a list, you may write eg

lines = sorted(file("/path/tofile"),key=mike)

to create it sorted.