Python: How to create new list with certain alphabetized items from original list?

Question

Suppose list1 is [a, y, k, x, d, l]

How do I make a new list containing the first two and last two alphabetically (a, d, and x, y)?

Answer 1

You can use sorted to sort the original list, then use list slicing to get the first two and last two elements of the sorted list.

>>> list1 = ['a', 'y', 'k', 'x', 'd', 'l']
>>> sorted_list = sorted(list1)
>>> new_list = sorted_list[0:2] + sorted_list[-2:]
>>> new_list
['a', 'd', 'x', 'y']