sorting

[ichabod801]

The lambda would look like this as a full function:

def sort_order(item):
    if isinstance(item, (int, float)):
        index = 0
    else:
        index = 1
    return (index, item)

You could simplify that some, but I'm trying to be clear. As zivoni points out, you can expand that:

def sort_order(item):
    if isinstance(item, (int, float)):
        index = 0
    elif isinstance(item, str):
        index = 1
    elif isinstance(item, (tuple, list)):
        index = 2
    elif isinstance(item, (dict, set)):
        index = 3
    else:
        index = 99
    return (index, item)

And of course, any big if/elif/else structure suggests a dictionary:

type_order = {int: 0, float: 0, str: 1, list: 2, tuple: 2, dict: 3, set: 3}
mixed_list.sort(key = lambda x: (type_order.get(x, 99), x))