#Sorting python list of dictionaries how to#

On the other hand, if you are dealing with a huge list, sorted () creates another list of the same size, so unless you have a good reason to keep the original list intact, using. If you need to keep around the original order, sorted () is the way to go.

In this post we saw 3 different ways of sorting a dictionary in descending order with Python. sort () method alters the calling list, so the original order is lost forever. You want to sort the values, in this case the grades, in a descending manner - the highest grade will appear first and the lowest last.įor example, you have this: grades = Īnd Voila! You have your grades dictionary sorted by value in a descending way. Say that you have the following dictionary containing your grades associated with a subject. The idea is to pass the dictionarys items to the sorted() function, which returns a sorted list of key-value pairs.

#Sorting python list of dictionaries how to#

In this post, you will learn how to sort a Python dictionary by value descending i.e. Or the second sorted could be replaced by doing an in-place sort on the intermediate list: l1 sorted (l, keylambda k:k 'surname', reverseTrue) l1.sort (keylambda k:k 'name') print (l1) A possible solution to avoid having to sort twice would be to define a comparison function cmp2 returning -1, 0 or 1 as appropriate (note the reversed.