How to natural sort string with multiple numbers in it

Question

How to do human sorting on below list, I want to sort based on last numbers e.g 45-50, 35-40 etc

list_list= ['N1-1TWS-AD03-____-001N-__45-50',
     'N1-1TWS-AD01-____-001N-__50-54',
     'N1-1TWS-AD01-____-001N-__54-58',
     'N1-1TWS-AD01-____-001N-__58-61',
     'N1-1TWS-AD01-____-001N-__61-65',
     'N1-2TWS-AD01-____-001S-__25-28',
     'N1-2TWS-AD01-____-001S-__25-28',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__28-31',
     'N1-4TWS-AD01-____-001S-__28-31',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__31-35',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__31-35',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__35-40',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__35-40',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__40-43',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__40-43',
     'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__43-47']

I tried sort and sorted but it wasn't giving the result I wanted. I want to sort like

['N1-2TWS-AD01-____-001S-__25-28',
'N1-2TWS-AD01-____-001S-__25-28',
'N1-3TWS-AD01-____-001S-__28-31',
'N1-4TWS-AD01-____-001S-__28-31',
 ...and so on...
'N1-1TWS-AD01-____-001N-__61-65']

Does this answer your question? [Is there a built in function for string natural sort?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4836710/is-there-a-built-in-function-for-string-natural-sort) — Ch3steR, Nov 25 '20 at 18:57
@Ch3steR not quite, his problem is simple without multiple numbers in a single string — Royal, Nov 25 '20 at 18:58
What do you mean by human sorting? Which strings do you want to come first and which next? — fdermishin, Nov 25 '20 at 19:06
Judging from the way you've provided your ideal sorted result is it only the last two double digits you want to sort by? — Swazy, Nov 25 '20 at 19:16
I've put a solution in the answers assuming that's what you mean. Let me know if you mean otherwise! — Swazy, Nov 25 '20 at 19:25
@Swazy Is there a way to do it for df column ? I want columns to move as the key column — Royal, Nov 25 '20 at 21:18
Hey @EegiiEnkhtaivan. I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean there is another part of the string you would like to sort by as well? — Swazy, Nov 25 '20 at 22:11
@Swazy Hi, Swazy. I mean is it possible to perform below in DF column ? — Royal, Nov 25 '20 at 22:13

Swazy · Accepted Answer · 2020-11-25T19:32:04.493

1

This should do the trick:

z = sorted(list_list, key=lambda s: (s[-5:-3], s[-2:]))

edited Nov 25 '20 at 19:32

answered Nov 25 '20 at 19:24

Swazy

378
3
10

1

Probably `z = sorted(list_list, key=lambda s: s[:-5])` will be enough for the provided data – fdermishin Nov 25 '20 at 19:27
Yeah agreed. Thought it might be nice to be explicit about how you could extract specific integers from the string to sort by. Maybe more complicated than necessary though :) – Swazy Nov 25 '20 at 19:30

How to natural sort string with multiple numbers in it

1 Answers1