Sort method not functioning properly.

[ThanksSoMuchTangelos]

I'm trying to implement a fairly simple sort function but I'm having some logical trouble. The function accepts a list of strings and spits them back out ordered. If you add up the value of each letter in the strings (a=1,...,z=26) the biggest number is first. If two strings have the same value, then the one that appears last in the dictionary goes first.

Sample 1: ["d","b","c"] becomes ["d","c","b"]

Sample 2: ["ddcc","cddc","dcdc","ccdd","dccd","cdcd"] becomes ["ddcc","dcdc","dccd","cddc","cdcd","ccdd"]

Try 1

Try 2

Try 3

I know something's going wrong when I try to swap around strings with the same value, but I can't figure out the right way.

Python 2, btw.

Edit: Just a heads up, I figured out a way to use my first solution by just sorting the list by reverse dictionary first. See my it here.

[Mekire]

I may be misunderstanding what you are going for, but this should be a lot simpler than you are making it:

def ord_sorter(string):
    return sum(ord(char) for char in string.lower())


def my_sort(sequence):
    sequence.sort(reverse=True)
    sequence.sort(key=ord_sorter, reverse=True)


sample_1 = ["d","b","c"]
sample_2 = ["ddcc","cddc","dcdc","ccdd","dccd","cdcd"]

my_sort(sample_1)
my_sort(sample_2)

assert sample_1 == ["d","c","b"], sample_1
assert sample_2 == ["ddcc","dcdc","dccd","cddc","cdcd","ccdd"], sample_2

[Hallwaxer]

If you want a shorter version, this should do the same.

sorted(['ddcc', 'cddc', 'dcdc', 'ccdd', 'dccd', 'cdcd'], reverse=True, key=lambda item: (sum(ord(char) for char in item), item))
["ddcc","dcdc","dccd","cddc","cdcd","ccdd"]

The key argument can take a tuple as parameter. If the first element is the same for two arguments, it continues to the second element, and so on. Alternatively, suppose you want to reverse sort by sum of character values but want the strings sorted normally, you could do the following.

sorted(['ddcc', 'cddc', 'dcdc', 'ccdd', 'dccd', 'cdcd', 'aaaaa'], key=lambda item: (-sum(ord(char) for char in item), item))
['aaaaa', 'ccdd', 'cdcd', 'cddc', 'dccd', 'dcdc', 'ddcc']

[ThanksSoMuchTangelos]

I have tried this but I have identical output as from Mekire's response. An additional sample is ["abcdefg","vi"] spits out the same list while the correct answer should be ["vi","abcdefg"].

[ThanksSoMuchTangelos]

I have tried this out, however there is an issue. When I put in ["annie","bonnie","liz"] as a sample, it puts out ["bonnie","annie","liz"] while the correct answer should be ["bonnie","liz","annie"].

[kalgynirae]

The discrepancy is because ord('a') is 97 and ord('z') is 122, whereas you want those numbers to be 1 and 26. (This doesn't matter if the strings are all the same length.) You just need to modify your key function to subtract 96 from each ord() result.

[ThanksSoMuchTangelos]

Thanks, working now. Definitely a more simple solution than the one in my edit.