Why does “return list.sort()” return None, not the list?

Question

I\'ve been able to verify that the findUniqueWords does result in a sorted list. However, it does not return the list. Why?

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Answer 1

Python habitually returns None from functions and methods that mutate the data, such as list.sort, list.append, and random.shuffle, with the idea being that it hints to the fact that it was mutating.

If you want to take an iterable and return a new, sorted list of its items, use the sorted builtin function.