How to sort by 2 integers

def sort():
        winfile = list()
        with open ('winners.txt') as fin:
                for line in fin:
                        winfile.append(line.strip('\n'))
        winfile.sort()
        with open('SortWin.txt', 'w+') as fout:
                for winfile in winfile:
                        fout.write(winfile + '\n')

11 Tom
2 Tom
20 Ben
20 Tom
21 Ben

Try using the key argument:

def sort():
    winfile = list()
    with open ('winners.txt') as fin:
            for line in fin:
                    winfile.append(line.strip('\n'))
    winfile.sort(key=lambda x: int(x.split()[0]))
    with open('SortWin.txt', 'w+') as fout:
            for winfile in winfile:
                    fout.write(winfile + '\n')

In order to sort the lines by the first column, you have to split them first and then sort accordingly, by supplying the proper key to sort():

import operator
if __name__ == "__main__":
    with open("to_be_sorted.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as f:
        data = [line.split() for line in f.readlines()]
    sort_by_first_column = lambda line: int(operator.itemgetter(0)(line))
    data.sort(key=sort_by_first_column)
    for line in data:
        print(" ".join(line))

Your winfile , after reading from winners.txt, contains a list of strings.

That is why the sort() function sort your string alphabetically .

One way, you can split your strings into two-item tuple/list(fastest is split() into list), cast the first item into int.

Now you sort this list. The output will be list of strings by itself.

def get_key(pair):
    pair = pair.split()
    return int(pair[0])
def sort():
    winfile = list()
    with open ('winners.txt') as fin:
             for line in fin:
                    winfile.append(line.strip('\n'))
    winfile.sort(key = get_key)
    with open('SortWin.txt', 'w+') as fout:
            for winfile in winfile:
                    fout.write(winfile + '\n')

because python open function will return some String object, so the number like this "11" but not 11, you can convert it by int(), but there are easy way, use pandas moudle. I assume your text is this:

11 Tom
2 Tom
20 Ben
20 Tom
21 Ben

1. use third-party (recommend)

first. you should install pandas, pip install pandas.

pands.read_csv site

import pandas as pd
# sep is Delimiter to use, default is comma
df = pd.read_csv('winners.txt', header=None, names=['num', 'name'], sep=' ', dtype={'num': int, 'name': str})
df = df.sort_index(by='num')
df.to_csv('SortWin.txt', index=False, sep=' ', header=None, mode='w+')

finally, the result like this

2 Tom
11 Tom
20 Ben
20 Tom
21 Ben

2. original python function solution

Don't use third-party, we can do it too.

def sort():
    winfile = list()
    with open ('winners.txt') as fin:
        for line in fin:
            winfile.append(line.strip('\n'))
    winfile.sort(key=lambda x: int(x.split(' ')[0]))
    with open('SortWin.txt', 'w+') as fout:
        for winfile in winfile:
            fout.write(winfile + '\n')