How to sort a list of strings that represent IP addresses? Of course, you could supply an appropriate comparison function to the sort() method of the list object, but that’s very inefficient (read: slow).

It is better to first pre-process the list so it can be sorted with the efficient built-in comparison function (which simply compares strings character-by-character), and afterwards post-process the sorted list back to the normal format. That trick is applicable to a lot of sorting situations, not just IP addresses.

In the case of IP addresses, we re-format them so that each of the four octets is aligned inside a three-character field (preceded by spaces if necessary). Then all strings will be the same length and can be sorted using the fast built-in comparison function. Afterwards, we simply remove all spaces.

for i in range(len(ips)):
ips[i] = "%3s.%3s.%3s.%3s" % tuple(ips[i].split("."))
ips.sort()
for i in range(len(ips)):
ips[i] = ips[i].replace(" ", "")