Question

I have one more assignment for the semester. It involves testing to see if a list is sorted or not. Given a list, say a list of numbers, test to see if the list is sorted and return a True value or if not return a False value. I have to create a function that does the testing.

I was thinking of using an if statement to test for True. Here is my code so far:

def my_list (list):
    list=[]
    if list.sorted() == True:
        print ("The list is sorted: True")
    else:
        print ("The list is unsorted: False")

list = input ("What is your list: ")

I am not sure this is the way to go. In fact I am not sure that you can test the sorted method in this manner. The assignment is due today and I am sure the time pressure is not letting me see the obvious.

Any help, even just sending me in the right direction would be helpful.

Answer 1

I won’t do the homework for you, but I’ll provide some hints.

There are several possible approaches:

1. You could sort the list and see if the sorting changes the order of elements.
2. You could iterate over the list, comparing each element to its immediate predecessor.

The first method is arguably easier to implement, whereas the second is more efficient.