Sorted() function in Python

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about the sorted() function in Python.

The function sorted() is used to sort an iterable in ascending or descending order. We can even sort the list of dictionaries based on different keys and values. Let's get most out of the sorted() function.

The sorted() function is not an in-place algorithm like sort method.

Default sorted()

The function sorted() will sort an iterable in ascending order by default. Let's see an example.

Example

 Live Demo

# initializing a list
numbers = [4, 3, 5, 1, 2]
# sorting the numbers
sorted_numbers = sorted(numbers)
# printing the sorted_numbers
print(sorted_numbers)

Output

If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

reverse sorted()

We can set a parameter reverse as True to sort the iterable in descending order. Let's see an example.

Example

 Live Demo

# initializing a list
numbers = [4, 3, 5, 1, 2]
# sorting the numbers
sorted_numbers = sorted(numbers, reverse=True)
# printing the sorted_numbers
print(sorted_numbers)

Output

If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.

[5, 4, 3, 2, 1]

key parameter with sorted()

The function sorted() will take another optional parameter called key. The parameter key is to tell the sorted() on which value it has to sort the list.

Let's say we have a list of dictionaries. We have to sort the list of dictionaries based on a certain value. In this case, we pass key as a parameter with a function that returns a specific value on which we have to sort the list of dictionaries.

Example

 Live Demo

# initializing a list
numbers = [{'a': 5}, {'b': 1, 'a': 1}, {'c': 3, 'a': 3}, {'d': 4, 'a': 4}, {'e'
'a': 2}]
# sorting the list of dict based on values
sorted_dictionaries = sorted(numbers, key= lambda dictionary: dictionary['a'])
# printing the numbers
print(sorted_dictionaries)

Output

If you run the above code, then you will get the following result.

[{'b': 1, 'a': 1}, {'e': 2, 'a': 2}, {'c': 3, 'a': 3}, {'d': 4, 'a': 4}, {'a':

Conclusion

If you have any doubts in the tutorial, mention them in the comment section.