Python – Sort Characters in String

Python – Sort Characters in String

String is a sequence of characters. We can sort these characters in ascending or descending order.

The steps to sort characters in String are:

1. Take a string.
2. Sort the characters using sorted() function.
3. Join the sorted characters into a string using str.join().

The other way of doing this is

1. Take a string.
2. Convert string to list of characters.
3. Sort the characters using list.sort() method.
4. Join the sorted characters into a string str.join().

In this tutorial, we will go through examples demonstrating the above two processes.

Examples

1. Sort characters in string using sorted()

In this example, we will take a string and sort the characters in it using sorted(). We will use str.join() method to join the sorted characters.

string = 'apple'
sorted_chars = sorted(string)
sorted_string = ''.join(sorted_chars)
print(sorted_string)

Output

aelpp

To sort the characters in descending order, you have have to provide True as argument for the named parameter reverse of sorted() function, as shown below.

string = 'apple'
sorted_chars = sorted(string, reverse=True)
sorted_string = ''.join(sorted_chars)
print(sorted_string)

Output

pplea

2. Sort characters in given string using list.sort()

In this example, we will take a string and sort the characters in it using list.sort() method. We will use str.join() method to join the sorted characters.

string = 'apple'
chars = list(string)
chars.sort()
sorted_string = ''.join(chars)
print(sorted_string)

Output

aelpp

The string is sorted in ascending order, which is the default order. You can sort the string in descending order using list.sort(reverse = True) as shown below.

string = 'apple'
chars = list(string)
chars.sort(reverse = True)
sorted_string = ''.join(chars)
print(sorted_string)

Output

pplea

Summary

In this tutorial of Python Examples, we learned how to sort characters in a string using list.sort() method and sorted() built-in function.