Python – Numeric Sort in Mixed Pair String List

Sometimes, while working with data records, we can have a problem in which we receive data in custom format, and we need to perform a sort. We can receive both name of person and space-separated score and require to get the best to worst sorting. Lets discuss a way in which this particular problem can be solved.

Method #1 : Using split() + sort() + key function
The combination of above functionalities can be used to perform this task. In this, we perform a sort using external function in which we split the string and extract the numeric part.

# Python3 code to demonstrate
# Numeric Sort in Mixed Pair String List
# using split() + sort() + key function

# helper function
def helper_func(ele):
        name, val = ele.split()
        return int(val)

# Initializing list
test_list = ["Manjeet 5", "Akshat 7", "Akash 6", "Nikhil 10"]

# printing original list
print("The original list is : " + str(test_list))

# Numeric Sort in Mixed Pair String List
# using split() + sort() + key function
test_list.sort(key = helper_func, reverse = True)

# printing result
print ("The reverse sorted numerics are : " + str(test_list))

Output :

The original list is : ['Manjeet 5', 'Akshat 7', 'Akash 6', 'Nikhil 10']
The reverse sorted numerics are : ['Nikhil 10', 'Akshat 7', 'Akash 6', 'Manjeet 5']

Method #2 : Using split() + lambda + sorted()
The combination of above methods can be used to perform this task. In this, we perform split on numbers as above. The difference is that it is one liner and use lambda function to perform.

# Python3 code to demonstrate
# Numeric Sort in Mixed Pair String List
# using split() + sorted() + lambda

# Initializing list
test_list = ["Manjeet 5", "Akshat 7", "Akash 6", "Nikhil 10"]

# printing original list
print("The original list is : " + str(test_list))

# Numeric Sort in Mixed Pair String List
# using split() + sorted() + lambda
res = sorted(test_list, reverse = True, key = lambda ele: int(ele.split()[1]))

# printing result
print ("The reverse sorted numerics are : " + str(res))

Output :

The original list is : ['Manjeet 5', 'Akshat 7', 'Akash 6', 'Nikhil 10']
The reverse sorted numerics are : ['Nikhil 10', 'Akshat 7', 'Akash 6', 'Manjeet 5']