Python sort list of list containing integer and string with integers inside

Question

How i can use python to sort the list format

format=[\"12 sheet\",\"4 sheet\",\"48 sheet\",\"6 sheet\", \"busrear\", \"phonebox\",\"train\"]

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Answer 1

You can do this:

lst = [[1L, u'12 sheet', 0],
       [2L, u'4 sheet', 0],
       [3L, u'48 sheet', 0],
       [4L, u'6 sheet', 0],
       [5L, u'Busrear', 0],
       [6L, u'phonebox', 0],
       [7L, u'train', 0]]

def sortby(x):
    try:
        return int(x[1].split(' ')[0])
    except ValueError:
        return float('inf')

lst.sort(key=sortby)
print lst

Output:

[[2L, u'4 sheet', 0], [4L, u'6 sheet', 0], [1L, u'12 sheet', 0], [3L, u'48 sheet', 0], [5L, u'Busrear', 0], [6L, u'phonebox', 0], [7L, u'train', 0]]

You can always use fancier list comprehension but readability counts. Which is why you might not feel like modifying the cool solution by falsetru for this slightly changed task.