Python – How does Python sort a list of tuples

python

Empirically, it seems that Python's default list sorter, when passed a list of tuples, will sort by the first element in each tuple. Is that correct? If not, what's the right way to sort a list of tuples by their first elements?

Best Answer

It automatically sorts a list of tuples by the first elements in the tuples, then by the second elements and so on tuple([1,2,3]) will go before tuple([1,2,4]). If you want to override this behaviour pass a callable as the second argument to the sort method. This callable should return 1, -1, 0.