How to sort two lists (which reference each other) in the exact same way

Question

One classic approach to this problem is to use the "decorate, sort, undecorate" idiom, which is especially simple using python's built-in zip function:

>>> list1 = [3,2,4,1, 1]
>>> list2 = ['three', 'two', 'four', 'one', 'one2']
>>> list1, list2 = zip(*sorted(zip(list1, list2)))
>>> list1
(1, 1, 2, 3, 4)
>>> list2 
('one', 'one2', 'two', 'three', 'four')

These of course are no longer lists, but that's easily remedied, if it matters:

>>> list1, list2 = (list(t) for t in zip(*sorted(zip(list1, list2))))
>>> list1
[1, 1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> list2
['one', 'one2', 'two', 'three', 'four']

It's worth noting that the above may sacrifice speed for terseness; the in-place version, which takes up 3 lines, is a tad faster on my machine for small lists:

>>> %timeit zip(*sorted(zip(list1, list2)))
100000 loops, best of 3: 3.3 us per loop
>>> %timeit tups = zip(list1, list2); tups.sort(); zip(*tups)
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.84 us per loop

On the other hand, for larger lists, the one-line version could be faster:

>>> %timeit zip(*sorted(zip(list1, list2)))
100 loops, best of 3: 8.09 ms per loop
>>> %timeit tups = zip(list1, list2); tups.sort(); zip(*tups)
100 loops, best of 3: 8.51 ms per loop

As Quantum7 points out, JSF's suggestion is a bit faster still, but it will probably only ever be a little bit faster, because Python uses the very same DSU idiom internally for all key-based sorts. It's just happening a little closer to the bare metal. (This shows just how well optimized the zip routines are!)

I think the zip-based approach is more flexible and is a little more readable, so I prefer it.

You can sort indexes using values as keys:

indexes = range(len(list1))
indexes.sort(key=list1.__getitem__)

To get sorted lists given sorted indexes:

sorted_list1 = map(list1.__getitem__, indexes)
sorted_list2 = map(list2.__getitem__, indexes)

In your case you shouldn't have list1, list2 but rather a single list of pairs:

data = [(3, 'three'), (2, 'two'), (4, 'four'), (1, 'one'), (1, 'one2')]

It is easy to create; it is easy to sort in Python:

data.sort() # sort using a pair as a key

Sort by the first value only:

data.sort(key=lambda pair: pair[0])

I have used the answer given by senderle for a long time until I discovered np.argsort. Here is how it works.

# idx works on np.array and not lists.
list1 = np.array([3,2,4,1])
list2 = np.array(["three","two","four","one"])
idx   = np.argsort(list1)

list1 = np.array(list1)[idx]
list2 = np.array(list2)[idx]

I find this solution more intuitive, and it works really well. The perfomance:

def sorting(l1, l2):
    # l1 and l2 has to be numpy arrays
    idx = np.argsort(l1)
    return l1[idx], l2[idx]

# list1 and list2 are np.arrays here...
%timeit sorting(list1, list2)
100000 loops, best of 3: 3.53 us per loop

# This works best when the lists are NOT np.array
%timeit zip(*sorted(zip(list1, list2)))
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.41 us per loop

# 0.01us better for np.array (I think this is negligible)
%timeit tups = zip(list1, list2); tups.sort(); zip(*tups)
100000 loops, best for 3 loops: 1.96 us per loop

Even though np.argsort isn't the fastest one, I find it easier to use.

Schwartzian transform. The built-in Python sorting is stable, so the two 1s don't cause a problem.

>>> l1 = [3, 2, 4, 1, 1]
>>> l2 = ['three', 'two', 'four', 'one', 'second one']
>>> zip(*sorted(zip(l1, l2)))
[(1, 1, 2, 3, 4), ('one', 'second one', 'two', 'three', 'four')]

One way is to track where each index goes to by sorting the identity [0,1,2,..n]

This works for any number of lists.

Then move each item to its position. Using splices is best.

list1 = [3,2,4,1, 1]
list2 = ['three', 'two', 'four', 'one', 'one2']

index = list(range(len(list1)))
print(index)
'[0, 1, 2, 3, 4]'

index.sort(key = list1.__getitem__)
print(index)
'[3, 4, 1, 0, 2]'

list1[:] = [list1[i] for i in index]
list2[:] = [list2[i] for i in index]

print(list1)
print(list2)
'[1, 1, 2, 3, 4]'
"['one', 'one2', 'two', 'three', 'four']"

Note we could have iterated the lists without even sorting them:

list1_iter = (list1[i] for i in index)

You can use the zip() and sort() functions to accomplish this:

Python 2.6.5 (r265:79063, Jun 12 2010, 17:07:01)
[GCC 4.3.4 20090804 (release) 1] on cygwin
>>> list1 = [3,2,4,1,1]
>>> list2 = ['three', 'two', 'four', 'one', 'one2']
>>> zipped = zip(list1, list2)
>>> zipped.sort()
>>> slist1 = [i for (i, s) in zipped]
>>> slist1
[1, 1, 2, 3, 4]
>>> slist2 = [s for (i, s) in zipped]
>>> slist2
['one', 'one2', 'two', 'three', 'four']

Hope this helps

What about:

list1 = [3,2,4,1, 1]
list2 = ['three', 'two', 'four', 'one', 'one2']

sortedRes = sorted(zip(list1, list2), key=lambda x: x[0]) # use 0 or 1 depending on what you want to sort
>>> [(1, 'one'), (1, 'one2'), (2, 'two'), (3, 'three'), (4, 'four')]