python - Sort list of date strings

Question

I have an arbitrary list of date strings (mm-yyyy) as follows:

d = ['09-2012', '04-2007', '11-2012', '05-2013', '12-2006', '05-2006', '08-2007'...]

I need this list to be sorted first by the level of years (ascending), then on the level of months (ascending)..so that the logical ordering can be:

d_ordered = ['05-2006', '12-2006', '04-2007', '08-2007', '09-2012', '11-2012', '05-2013' ...]

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

Try this:

import datetime
d = ['09-2012', '04-2007', '11-2012', '05-2013', '12-2006', '05-2006', '08-2007']
sorted(d, key=lambda x: datetime.datetime.strptime(x, '%m-%Y'))