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 ]
What is the shortest way of sorting X using values from Y to get the following output?
["a", "d", "h", "b", "c", "e", "i", "f", "g"]
The order of the elements having the same "key" does not matter. I can resort to the use of for
constructs but I am curious if there is a shorter way. Any suggestions?
Accepted Answer
Shortest Code
[x for _,x in sorted(zip(Y,X))]
Example:
X = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i"]
Y = [ 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 2, 2, 0, 1]
Z = [x for _,x in sorted(zip(Y,X))]
print(Z) # ["a", "d", "h", "b", "c", "e", "i", "f", "g"]
Generally Speaking
[x for _, x in sorted(zip(Y,X), key=lambda pair: pair[0])]
Explained:
zip
the twolist
s.- create a new, sorted
list
based on thezip
usingsorted()
. - using a list comprehension extract the first elements of each pair from the sorted, zipped
list
.
For more information on how to set\use the key
parameter as well as the sorted
function in general, take a look at this.
Read more... Read less...
Zip the two lists together, sort it, then take the parts you want:
>>> yx = zip(Y, X)
>>> yx
[(0, 'a'), (1, 'b'), (1, 'c'), (0, 'd'), (1, 'e'), (2, 'f'), (2, 'g'), (0, 'h'), (1, 'i')]
>>> yx.sort()
>>> yx
[(0, 'a'), (0, 'd'), (0, 'h'), (1, 'b'), (1, 'c'), (1, 'e'), (1, 'i'), (2, 'f'), (2, 'g')]
>>> x_sorted = [x for y, x in yx]
>>> x_sorted
['a', 'd', 'h', 'b', 'c', 'e', 'i', 'f', 'g']
Combine these together to get:
[x for y, x in sorted(zip(Y, X))]
Also, if you don't mind using numpy arrays (or in fact already are dealing with numpy arrays...), here is another nice solution:
people = ['Jim', 'Pam', 'Micheal', 'Dwight']
ages = [27, 25, 4, 9]
import numpy
people = numpy.array(people)
ages = numpy.array(ages)
inds = ages.argsort()
sortedPeople = people[inds]
I found it here: http://scienceoss.com/sort-one-list-by-another-list/
The most obvious solution to me is to use the key
keyword arg.
>>> X = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i"]
>>> Y = [ 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 2, 2, 0, 1]
>>> keydict = dict(zip(X, Y))
>>> X.sort(key=keydict.get)
>>> X
['a', 'd', 'h', 'b', 'c', 'e', 'i', 'f', 'g']
Note that you can shorten this to a one-liner if you care to:
>>> X.sort(key=dict(zip(X, Y)).get)
more_itertools
has a tool for sorting iterables in parallel:
Given
from more_itertools import sort_together
X = ["a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i"]
Y = [ 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 2, 2, 0, 1]
Demo
sort_together([Y, X])[1]
# ('a', 'd', 'h', 'b', 'c', 'e', 'i', 'f', 'g')
I actually came here looking to sort a list by a list where the values matched.
list_a = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
list_b = ['baz', 'bar', 'foo']
sorted(list_b, key=lambda x: list_a.index(x))
# ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']