Sorting list of lists by a third list of specified non-sorted order

Question

I have a list:

[[\'18411971\', \'kinase_2\', 36], [\'75910712\', \'unnamed...\', 160], ...

• about 60 entries long
• each entry

Answer 1

So, if I understand you right, you have your sample input list:

a = [['18411971', 'kinase_2', 36], ['75910712', 'unnamed...', 160], ...

and you want to sort this using an extra list that mentions the order in which the first elements of the sub-lists are to occur in the output:

aux = ['75910712', '18411971', ...]

If that's right, I think the result can be achieved using something like:

sorted(a, key = lambda x: aux.index(x[0]))