Reconciling Differences Between Python List Sort and ArcMap Table Sort

Question

I have a feature class being used in Data Driven Pages, which sorts as follows:

• APPLE LARRY
• JOHNSON SHIRLEY
• KENT-STATE-GOODS LLC
• KENT TIMOTHY
• KENT VANESSA
• KENT WAYNE
• SMITH JEEVES

I also have the Data Driven Pages run via a script, and because we don't yet have ESRI Production Mapping, table generation has to be done as part of this script. When this script runs, a Python list is created containing these names. My list parcelOwners[] is then sorted using parcelOwners.sort(), but I get a different sort order amongst the KENT's because of the hyphen. That sort order is as follows:

• APPLE LARRY
• JOHNSON SHIRLEY
• KENT TIMOTHY
• KENT VANESSA
• KENT WAYNE
• KENT-STATE-GOODS LLC
• SMITH JEEVES

As you could imagine, the difference in sort order causes problems when the tables generate for a given set of pages amongst the KENT names. Page 3 gets the table data intended for Page 4, 4 for 5, 5 for 6, and 6 for 3. Is there a way to change how Python sorts my list when it encounters hyphens to match how ArcMap sorts the same data?

Answer 1

Use sorted with a lambda function replacing "-" with spaces:

names = ['APPLE LARRY','KENT TIMOTHY','KENT VANESSA','KENT WAYNE','KENT-STATE-GOODS LLC','SMITH JEEVES','JOHNSON SHIRLEY']
sorted(names, key=lambda x: x.replace("-", " "))
print names

>['APPLE LARRY', 'JOHNSON SHIRLEY', 'KENT-STATE-GOODS LLC', 'KENT TIMOTHY', 'KENT VANESSA', 'KENT WAYNE', 'SMITH JEEVES']