Sort a list in python

python list sorting absolute-value

Diego Martínez Giardini · Oct 5, 2013 · Viewed 16.8k times · Source

I have this list

[1,-5,10,6,3,-4,-9]

But now I want the list to be sorted like this:

[10,-9,6,-5,-4,3,1]

As you can see I want to order from high to low no matter what sign each number has, but keeping the sign, is it clear?

Answer

Use abs as key to the sorted function or list.sort:

>>> lis = [1,-5,10,6,3,-4,-9]
>>> sorted(lis, key=abs, reverse=True)
[10, -9, 6, -5, -4, 3, 1]