How to sort the following structure in Python

Question

I have the following list of lists in Python.

[[53.60495722746216, 'Percent Cats'],
 [45.298311033121294, 'Percent Dogs'],
 [1.0967317394165388, 'Percent Horses']]

Now I want the Animal with the highest percentage . In this case the it would be Cats.

How do I sort this structure to get the value out?

Here's a simple how to sort guide for Python: docs.python.org/2.7/howto/sorting.html . The same techniques also work for min(), max(), nsmallest(), nlargest(), and groupby() from the heapq and itertools modules. — Raymond Hettinger
– Raymond Hettinger, Commented Aug 11, 2015 at 14:57

vaultah · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-18 13:13:58Z

8

You don't need to sort the list if you only need to get one value. Use the built-in max function with custom ordering function like this

In [3]: max(l, key=lambda x: x[0])[1] # compare first elements of inner lists
Out[3]: 'Percent Cats'

or even

In [4]: max(l)[1] # compare lists directly
Out[4]: 'Percent Cats'

The latter code will work as well, because sequence objects may be compared to other objects with the same sequence type:

The comparison uses lexicographical ordering: first the first two items are compared, and if they differ this determines the outcome of the comparison; if they are equal, the next two items are compared, and so on, until either sequence is exhausted. If all items of two sequences compare equal, the sequences are considered equal.

edited May 18, 2015 at 13:13

answered May 18, 2015 at 13:02

vaultah

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rajeshv90 · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-18 13:08:42Z

0

a = [[53.60495722746216, 'Percent Cats'], [45.298311033121294, 'Percent Dogs'], [1.0967317394165388, 'Percent Horses']]
print sorted(a, key=lambda x:x[0], reverse=True)[0]

answered May 18, 2015 at 13:08

rajeshv90

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