title: Python sorted() function not working the way it should
body: <p>Basically I have a nested list that I am trying to sort through the 1'st index
  I copied the way that the python howto says how to do it but it doesn't seem to work and I don't understand why:</p>
  
  <p>code from the website:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; student_tuples = [
      ('john', 'A', 15),
      ('jane', 'B', 12),
      ('dave', 'B', 10),
      ]
  &gt;&gt;&gt; sorted(student_tuples, key=lambda student: student[2])   # sort by age
      [('dave', 'B', 10), ('jane', 'B', 12), ('john', 'A', 15)]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def print_scores(self):
      try:
          #opening txt and reading data then breaking data into list separated by "-"
          f = open(appdata + "scores.txt", "r")
          fo = f.read()
          f.close()
          userlist = fo.split('\n')
          sheet_list = []
          for user in userlist:
              sheet = user.split('-')
              if len(sheet) != 2:
                  continue
              sheet_list.append(sheet)
          sorted(sheet_list, key = lambda ele : ele[1]) #HERE IS THE COPIED PART!
          if len(sheet_list) &gt; 20: # only top 20 scores are printed
              sheet_list = sheet_list[len(sheet_list) - 21 :len(sheet_list) - 1]
         #prints scores in a nice table
          print "name          score"
          for user in sheet_list:
              try:
                  name = user[0]
                  score = user[1]
                  size = len(name)
                  for x in range(0,14):
                      if x &gt; size - 1:
                          sys.stdout.write(" ")
                      else:
                          sys.stdout.write(name[x])
                  sys.stdout.write(score + "\n")
              except:
                  print ""
  
  
      except:
           print "no scores to be displayed!"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The bug is that the resulting printed list is exactly like how it was in the txt as if the sorting function didn't do anything!</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <p>Data in txt file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Jerry-1284
  Tom-264
  Barry-205
  omgwtfbbqhaxomgsss-209
  Giraffe-1227
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What's printed:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Name          Score
  Jerry         1284
  Tom           264
  Barry         205
  omgstfbbqhaxom209
  Giraffe       1227
  </code></pre>