Sorting list based on values from another list?

Question

I have a list of strings like this:

X = [\"a\", \"b\", \"c\", \"d\", \"e\", \"f\", \"g\", \"h\", \"i\"]
Y = [ 0,   1,   1,   0,   1,   2,   2,   0,   1 ]
         


        

Answer 1

I have created a more general function, that sorts more than two lists based on another one, inspired by @Whatang's answer.

def parallel_sort(*lists):
    """
    Sorts the given lists, based on the first one.
    :param lists: lists to be sorted

    :return: a tuple containing the sorted lists
    """

    # Create the initially empty lists to later store the sorted items
    sorted_lists = tuple([] for _ in range(len(lists)))

    # Unpack the lists, sort them, zip them and iterate over them
    for t in sorted(zip(*lists)):
        # list items are now sorted based on the first list
        for i, item in enumerate(t):    # for each item...
            sorted_lists[i].append(item)  # ...store it in the appropriate list

    return sorted_lists