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comprehending data

Test Drive

Combine your sanitize() function with your amended code from the previous page, and then
press F5 in IDLE to confirm the sorting is now working as expected.

The sanitized data only
contains ‘.’ as a separator.

The ordering works, because all the Four sorted
times are now comparable. lists

This output looks much better.
It’s taken a bit of work, but now the data from each of the four files is both
sorted and uniformly formatted. By preprocessing your data before you
sort it, you’ve helped ensure Python’s sorting technology performs correctly.

Geek Bits

By default, both the sort() method and the sorted()
BIF order your data in ascending order. To order your data in
descending order, pass the reverse=True argument to
either sort() or sorted() and Python will take care of
things for you.

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