Sorting a multidimensional array by multiple keys

[Duncan Booth]

Rehceb Rotkiv <rehceb at no.spam.plz> wrote:

> Wait, I made a mistake. The correct result would be
> 
> reaction is BUT by the
> pattern , BUT it is
> rapid , BUT it is
> sea , BUT it is
> sodium , BUT it is
> this manner BUT the dissolved
> 
> because "by the" comes before and "the dissolved" after "it is". Sorry 
> for the confusion.

>>> data = [
	"reaction is BUT by the",
	"sodium , BUT it is",
	"sea , BUT it is",
	"this manner BUT the dissolved",
	"pattern , BUT it is",
	"rapid , BUT it is",
	]
>>> data = [ s.split() for s in data]
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(data)
[['reaction', 'is', 'BUT', 'by', 'the'],
 ['sodium', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['sea', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['this', 'manner', 'BUT', 'the', 'dissolved'],
 ['pattern', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['rapid', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is']]
>>> from operator import itemgetter
>>> data.sort(key=itemgetter(0))
>>> data.sort(key=itemgetter(1))
>>> data.sort(key=itemgetter(4))
>>> data.sort(key=itemgetter(3))
>>> pprint(data)
[['reaction', 'is', 'BUT', 'by', 'the'],
 ['pattern', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['rapid', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['sea', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['sodium', ',', 'BUT', 'it', 'is'],
 ['this', 'manner', 'BUT', 'the', 'dissolved']]