Question: I have a nested list of numbers and strings. How can I sort this list according to alphabetical order of strings.

`a=[['ftr', 323.0], ['adnb', 231.0], ['fgh', 432.0], ['vhg', 34.0], ['ytgfre', 34.0]]`

I tried using sort() method with lamda function, but it doesn't work. It returs the same unsorted list.

`a.sort(key=lambda x: x[0])`

Answer: 
Seems to be working just fine without any `lambda` functions:

```
>>> a=[['ftr', 323.0], ['adnb', 231.0], ['fgh', 432.0], ['vhg', 34.0], ['ytgfre', 34.0]]
>>> sorted(a)
[['adnb', 231.0], ['fgh', 432.0], ['ftr', 323.0], ['vhg', 34.0], ['ytgfre', 34.0]]
>>>

```
As the [Docs](http://%20https://docs.python.org/3/howto/sorting.html) say

> 
> Python lists have a built-in list.sort() method that modifies the list
> in-place.
> 
> 
> There is also a sorted() built-in function that builds a new sorted
> list from an iterable.
> 
> 
> 

As @mapfs also commented `sort` won't return a modified list.
Use `sorted` instead