sorting the list by inner elements

[Thorsten Kampe]

Catching up old stuff...

* ketulp_baroda at yahoo.com (2004-03-24 15:43 +0100)
>  I want to sort the list,the form of my list is
> 
>   name_city_list=[['jack','new york'],['mac','london'],['alice','paris']]
> 
> all inner list has same format i.e first is name and second is city.
> now I want to sort it by the second element of the inner list(by city name).
> 
> i.e after sorting my list should be like this
> 
>   name_city_list=[['mac','london'],['jack','new york'],['alice','paris']]

You need a general function sort:

def funcsort(seq, func):
    """ sort seq by func(item) """
    seq = seq[:]
    seq.sort(lambda x, y: cmp(func(x), func(y)))
    return seq

funcsort(name_city_list, lambda x: x[1])