Sorting and Grouping Nested Lists in Python

Question

I have the following data structure (a list of lists)

[
 [\'4\', \'21\', \'1\', \'14\', \'2008-10-24 15:42:58\'], 
 [\'3\', \'22\', \'4\', \'2somename\', \'2         


        

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, the following code should do the job:

l = [
 ['4', '21', '1', '14', '2008-10-24 15:42:58'], 
 ['3', '22', '4', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:22:03'], 
 ['5', '21', '3', '19', '2008-10-24 15:45:45'], 
 ['6', '21', '1', '1somename', '2008-10-24 15:45:49'], 
 ['7', '22', '3', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:45:51']
]

def compareField(field):
   def c(l1,l2):
      return cmp(l1[field], l2[field])
   return c

# Use compareField(1) as the ordering criterion, i.e. sort only with
# respect to the 2nd field
l.sort(compareField(1))
for row in l: print row

print
# Select only those sublists for which 4th field=='2somename'
l2somename = [row for row in l if row[3]=='2somename']
for row in l2somename: print row

Output:

['4', '21', '1', '14', '2008-10-24 15:42:58']
['5', '21', '3', '19', '2008-10-24 15:45:45']
['6', '21', '1', '1somename', '2008-10-24 15:45:49']
['3', '22', '4', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:22:03']
['7', '22', '3', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:45:51']

['3', '22', '4', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:22:03']
['7', '22', '3', '2somename', '2008-10-24 15:45:51']