Python Sorting problem!

[tmakila]

Hello,

I'm quite a newbie with Python and I ran into a bit of a problemwith sorting a list by more than one field.

I have a list similar to this:
[['10', 'a', 'Something'], ['1', 'a', 'Nothing'],
['3', 'a', 'Anything'], ['10', 'b', 'Something'],
['1', 'b', 'Nothing'], ['3', 'b', 'Anything'],
['10', 'c', 'Something'], ['1', 'c', 'Nothing'],
['3', 'c', 'Anything']]

What I want to do is produce a list containing the same
information in a following order:
1 a Something
3 a Anything
10 a Nothing
1 b Something
3 b Anything
10 b Nothing
1 c Something
3 c Anything
10 c Nothing

The idea is to sort the second fields in the list alphabetically and after that sort them numerically (according to the first field). The third field is irrelevant.

I currently have a def that looks like this:
def sort_by_bar(a, b):
return cmp(a[1], b[1])

(and it gets called by 'list.sort(sort_by_bar)' elsewhere)

This sorts the list by one bar only..

How can I make the def sort it like I described earlier?

Thank you!

 

[ericbrunson]

You need to do something like:

def sort_by_bar(a, b):
  if a[1] == b[1]:
    return cmp( a[0], b[0] )
  else:
    return cmp( a[1], b[1] )

 

[mikevh]

This seems to work as well:

def sort_by_bar(a, b):
    return cmp(a[1], b[1]) or cmp(a[0], b[0])