Python: Sort a List in Descending Order

Sorting a list in Python is a common task. You may find yourself needing to sort a list of strings, numbers, or even objects. Python provides several methods for sorting lists, and one of them is using the sort() function.

Consider the following list of timestamps:

timestamps = [
    "2010-04-20 10:07:30",
    "2010-04-20 10:07:38",
    "2010-04-20 10:07:52",
    "2010-04-20 10:08:22",
    "2010-04-20 10:08:22",
    "2010-04-20 10:09:46",
    "2010-04-20 10:10:37",
    "2010-04-20 10:10:58",
    "2010-04-20 10:11:50",
    "2010-04-20 10:12:13",
    "2010-04-20 10:12:13",
    "2010-04-20 10:25:38"
]

To sort this list in descending order, you can use the sort() function with the reverse argument set to True. The reverse argument reverses the order of the sorted elements.

sorted_timestamps = sorted(timestamps, reverse=True)

The sorted_timestamps variable will now contain a new list with the timestamps sorted in descending order.

If you want to sort the list in-place, you can use the following code:

timestamps.sort(reverse=True)

The timestamps list will now be sorted in descending order.