sort string arrays of texts by length python

Question

I have an array that containts elements out of words. I want to have a sorted list at the end. How do I do this in python? Thanks

Eg:

SETACTION = "forever", "for one and",  "for two"

=>

SETACTION = "for one and", "for two", "forever"

Asked By: Naveen

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Source

Answer 1

You can easily achieve that using sorted with a custom key and reverse=True like so:

>>> sorted(SETACTION, key=len, reverse=True)
['for one and', 'forever', 'for two']

Do keep in mind forever and for<space>two are the same length.

Answered By: Bharel

Answer 2

Just to go a little further: if you want strings of the same length to be sorted alphabetically, you can write a custom sorting function; for example:

SETACTION = "forever", "for one and",  "for two"

def my_sorting_func(x):
    return -len(x),x

# It will sort first by -length (thus by descending length) then by alphabetical order

print(sorted(SETACTION, key=my_sorting_func))

Answered By: Swifty

Answer 3

You can use a lambda that will sort first by reverse length then by length of the first element:

>>> sorted(SETACTION,key=lambda s:(-len(s), len(s.partition(' ')[0])))
['for one and', 'for two', 'forever']

Answered By: dawg

sort string arrays of texts by length python

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