python sort by last word in line, different length lines

Question

I have a file that has between 1 or 4 words per line, and I want to sort by the third word in the line. The below code does not work if there isn't a word in the s[2] slot. Is there anything I can do to still sort everything does? Thanks

with open('myfile.txt') as fin:
lines = [line.split() for line in fin]
lines.sort(key=lambda s: s[2])

Answer 1

‏You may want to try using the slice syntax

with open('myfile.txt') as fin:
    lines = [line.split() for line in fin]
    lines.sort(key=lambda s: s[2:3]) # will give empty list if there is no 3rd word

Answer 2

Try this:

x.sort(key=lambda s: s[2] if len(s) > 2 else ord('z')+1)

That way if there is no s[2] it returns the next thing after 'z' (presumably the last ascii character value in your strings). Feel free to change ord('z')+1 to some other large number