Jay Parlar wrote: > > On May 4, 2006, at 12:12 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > [...]
> Assume that you have the lines in a list called 'lines', > as follows: > > lines = [ > "1SOME STRING ~ABC~12311232432D~20060401~00000000", > "3SOME STRING ~ACD~14353453554G~20060401~00000000", > "2SOME STRING ~DEF~13534534543C~20060401~00000000"] > > > The more traditional way would be to define your own comparison function: > > def my_cmp(x,y): > return cmp( x.split("~")[1], y.split("~")[1]) > > lines.sort(cmp=my_cmp) > > > The newer, faster way, would be to define your own key function: > > def my_key(x): > return x.split("~")[1] > > lines.sort(key=my_key) and if the data is in a file rather than a list, you may write eg lines = sorted(file("/path/tofile"),key=mike) to create it sorted. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list