Sorting by arbitrary lambda

Question

How can I sort a list by a key described by an arbitrary function? For example, if I have:

mylist = [[\"quux\", 1, \"a\"], [\"bar\", 0, \"b\"]]

Answer 1

Sort and itemgetter is the fastest.

>>> import operator
>>> import timeit

>>> mylist = [["quux", 1, "a"], ["bar", 0, "b"]]
>>> t1 = timeit.Timer(lambda: mylist.sort(key=lambda x: x[1]))
>>> t1.timeit()
1.6330803055632404

>>> t2 = timeit.Timer(lambda: mylist.sort(key=operator.itemgetter(1)))
>>> t2.timeit()
1.3985503043467773

>>> t3 = timeit.Timer(lambda: sorted(mylist, key=operator.itemgetter(1)))
>>> t3.timeit()
2.6329514733833292

>>> t4 = timeit.Timer(lambda: sorted(mylist, key=lambda x: x[1]))
>>> t4.timeit()
2.9197154810598533