I have a list of numbers in Python and I’m trying to sort them in ascending order. Here’s my code:
numbers = [5, 2, 1, 8, 4]
I tried using the sort() function like this: sort(numbers), but I get an error that says name 'sort' is not defined. What am I doing wrong and how can I sort my list?
First of all, when you ask a question try to be as descriptive as possible regarding your problem. A part from the input you are using, here you should add the whole code and also the error message if possible.
Okay!, let's go to the question. Note that sort() is a method of the list class, and it affects the original list you are calling this method on, because it runs in-place (aka returns None). Therefore the syntax (without any additional arguments) would be:
numbers.sort()
This approach is slightly more efficient.
On the other side, if you want to use the built-in function sorted(), you need to assign it to a new variable, as this function creates a new list from the original one, for example:
numbers_sorted = sorted(numbers)
Check this for more examples.
Hope it is clear enough!
numbers.sort()sorted. Alternatively, you could use thesortmethod of the list. Read the documentation to find out about the difference between those two approaches.