sort_values(by, axis=0, ascending=True, inplace=False, kind='quicksort', na_position='last') method of pandas.core.frame.DataFrame instance
Sort by the values along either axis
.. versionadded:: 0.17.0
Parameters
----------
by : str or list of str
Name or list of names which refer to the axis items.
axis : {0 or 'index', 1 or 'columns'}, default 0
Axis to direct sorting
ascending : bool or list of bool, default True
Sort ascending vs. descending. Specify list for multiple sort
orders. If this is a list of bools, must match the length of
the by.
inplace : bool, default False
if True, perform operation in-place
kind : {'quicksort', 'mergesort', 'heapsort'}, default 'quicksort'
Choice of sorting algorithm. See also ndarray.np.sort for more
information. `mergesort` is the only stable algorithm. For
DataFrames, this option is only applied when sorting on a single
column or label.
na_position : {'first', 'last'}, default 'last'
`first` puts NaNs at the beginning, `last` puts NaNs at the end
Returns
-------
sorted_obj : DataFrame
Examples
--------
>>> df = pd.DataFrame({
... 'col1' : ['A', 'A', 'B', np.nan, 'D', 'C'],
... 'col2' : [2, 1, 9, 8, 7, 4],
... 'col3': [0, 1, 9, 4, 2, 3],
... })
>>> df
col1 col2 col3
0 A 2 0
1 A 1 1
2 B 9 9
3 NaN 8 4
4 D 7 2
5 C 4 3
Sort by col1
>>> df.sort_values(by=['col1'])
col1 col2 col3
0 A 2 0
1 A 1 1
2 B 9 9
5 C 4 3
4 D 7 2
3 NaN 8 4
Sort by multiple columns
>>> df.sort_values(by=['col1', 'col2'])
col1 col2 col3
1 A 1 1
0 A 2 0
2 B 9 9
5 C 4 3
4 D 7 2
3 NaN 8 4
Sort Descending
>>> df.sort_values(by='col1', ascending=False)
col1 col2 col3
4 D 7 2
5 C 4 3
2 B 9 9
0 A 2 0
1 A 1 1
3 NaN 8 4
Putting NAs first
>>> df.sort_values(by='col1', ascending=False, na_position='first')
col1 col2 col3
3 NaN 8 4
4 D 7 2
5 C 4 3
2 B 9 9
0 A 2 0
1 A 1 1
