Sorting list that has tuple as an element with Python

Question

I have a list as follows.

[(5,), (2,), (4,), (1,), (3,), (6,), (7,), (8,)]

How can I sort the list to get

[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

or

[8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1]

?

Answer 1

Convert the list of tuples into a list of integers, then sort it:

thelist = [(5,), (2,), (4,), (1,), (3,), (6,), (7,), (8,)]

sortedlist = sorted([x[0] for x in thelist])

print sortedlist

See it on codepad

Answer 2

I'll give you an even more generalized answer:

from itertools import chain
sorted( chain.from_iterable( myList ) )

which can sort not only what you've asked for but also any list of arbitrary length tuples.

Answer 3

datalist = [(5,), (2,), (4,), (1,), (3,), (6,), (7,), (8,)]
sorteddata = sorted(data for listitem in datalist for data in listitem)
reversedsorted = sorteddata[::-1]
print sorteddata
print reversedsorted

# Also
print 'With zip', sorted(zip(*datalist)[0])