python - Sort list of strings by a part of the string

Question

I have a list of strings which have the following format:

['variable1 (name1)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable3 (name3)', ...]

... and I want to sort the list based on the (nameX) part, alphabetically. How would I go about doing this?

Answer 1

To change sorting key, use the key parameter:

>>>s = ['variable1 (name3)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable3 (name1)']
>>> s.sort(key = lambda x: x.split()[1])
>>> s
['variable3 (name1)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable1 (name3)']
>>> 

Works the same way with sorted:

>>>s = ['variable1 (name3)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable3 (name1)']
>>> sorted(s)
['variable1 (name3)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable3 (name1)']
>>> sorted(s, key = lambda x: x.split()[1])
['variable3 (name1)', 'variable2 (name2)', 'variable1 (name3)']
>>> 

Note that, as described in the question, this will be an alphabetical sort, thus for 2-digit components it will not interpret them as numbers, e.g. "11" will come before "2".