4.6. index_natsorted()

natsort.index_natsorted(seq, key=None, reverse=False, alg=0, **_kwargs)

Return the list of the indexes used to sort the input sequence.

Sorts a sequence naturally, but returns a list of sorted the indexes and not the sorted list. This list of indexes can be used to sort multiple lists by the sorted order of the given sequence.

Parameters:
  • seq (iterable) – The sequence to sort.
  • key (callable, optional) – A key used to determine how to sort each element of the sequence. It is not applied recursively. It should accept a single argument and return a single value.
  • reverse ({True, False}, optional) – Return the list in reversed sorted order. The default is False.
  • alg (ns enum, optional) – This option is used to control which algorithm natsort uses when sorting. For details into these options, please see the ns class documentation. The default is ns.INT.
Returns:

out – The ordered indexes of the sequence.

Return type:

tuple

Examples

Use index_natsorted if you want to sort multiple lists by the sorted order of one list:

>>> a = ['num3', 'num5', 'num2']
>>> b = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']
>>> index = index_natsorted(a)
>>> index
[2, 0, 1]
>>> # Sort both lists by the sort order of a
>>> order_by_index(a, index)
['num2', 'num3', 'num5']
>>> order_by_index(b, index)
['baz', 'foo', 'bar']