Python Sort Default: Ascending Order Explained

In Python, the sort() method for lists defaults to sorting in ascending order, meaning it will rearrange the list in order of element size. For example, numerical lists will be sorted in numerical order by default, and string lists will be sorted alphabetically.

Here is a simple example to demonstrate the default sorting behavior of the sort() method:

numbers = [3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5, 3, 5]
numbers.sort()

print(numbers)

In this example, the list ‘numbers’ contains some numbers. When the sort() method is called, the list will be rearranged in ascending order, resulting in [1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 9].

It is important to note that the sort() method will directly modify the original list rather than returning a new sorted list. If you want to keep the original list and get a sorted copy, you can use the sorted() function, which will return a new sorted list without changing the original.