A sort of Pythonic bite

To sort or to sorted(), that is the question

Suppose we have a list, which we want to sort. We can use the sort() method in Python, in order to arrange the elements of the list in a specific order (ascending order by default).

Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

The key point to note about this method is that:

1. In-Place sort: The orignal list gets modified. No new list is created.
2. No return value: The method return None.

Let’s look at an example to better understand this.

Let’s start with a simple list.

numbers = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6]

Here’s what happens when we use sort()

result = numbers.sort()

If we look at our orignal list,

print("Original list after sort():", numbers)

we get:

[1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9]

Now let’s see what’s inside the result:

print("Result of sort():", result) 

we get:

None

Here we observe that:

• After calling numbers.sort(), the original numbers list is rearranged in ascending order.
• The return value of…