let's say you have a list, and you want to sort it. you can use the build in function sorted()
Help on built-in function sorted in module __builtin__:
sorted(...)
sorted(iterable, cmp=None, key=None, reverse=False) --> new sorted list
(END)
it takes any iterable as input.
for example:
>>> a=[4,2,1,6]
>>> sorted(a)
[1, 2, 4, 6]
>>> sorted(a, reverse=True)
[6, 4, 2, 1]
>>> a=['ccc','aaaa','d','bb']
>>> sorted(a)
['aaaa', 'bb', 'ccc', 'd']
if you want to sort according to the length of the string, pass a len function as the argument
>>> sorted(a, key=len)
['d', 'bb', 'ccc', 'aaaa']
>>> a=['ccc','aaaz','a','bb']
you want to sort according to the last letter of the string
>>> def last(s):
... return s[-1]
...
>>> sorted(a, key=last)
['a', 'bb', 'ccc', 'aaaz']
let's say you have a list of tuples, the sorted function sorts according to the first element
of the tuple, if they are the same, compare the second element of the tuple.
>>> a=[(1,'b'),(2,'a'),(1,'a')]
>>> sorted(a)
[(1, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (2, 'a')]
so, if you want to sort by something first and then sort by another thing next, you can write
a key function to return a tuple.