Check If a Tuple is Sorted in Python

A tuple is an ordered collection of items in Python. That is, there’s an order to the elements present inside a tuple. In this tutorial, we will look at how to check if a tuple is sorted or not in Python with the help of some examples.

How to check if a tuple is sorted or not?

You can use the following methods to check if a tuple is sorted or not –

1. Iterate through the tuple and see if the elements are in order.
2. Compare the tuple with the corresponding sorted tuple.

Let’s now look at the above methods through some examples.

Iterate through the tuple

Iterate through the tuple in Python to check if it’s sorted or not. If any element is out of order, we can say that the tuple is not sorted.

For example, to check if a tuple is sorted in ascending order, we check if the current element is smaller than the previous element. If for any element this condition is satisfied, we can say that the tuple is not sorted.

Let’s look at an example.

# function to check if tuple is sorted in ascending order
def is_tuple_sorted(t):
    for i in range(1, len(t)):
        # return False if the element is smaller than the previous element
        if t[i] < t[i-1]:
            return False
    return True

# create a tuple
t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
# check if tuple is sorted
print(is_tuple_sorted(t))

Output:

True

We get True as the output because all the elements in the tuple are present in ascending order.

You can similarly check if elements are present in descending order or not by modifying the condition.

# function to check if tuple is sorted in descending order
def is_tuple_sorted(t):
    for i in range(1, len(t)):
        # return False if the element is greater than the previous element
        if t[i] > t[i-1]:
            return False
    return True

# create a tuple
t = (5, 4, 3, 2, 1)
# check if tuple is sorted
print(is_tuple_sorted(t))

Output:

True

We get True as the output.

The worst-case time complexity of this method is O(N).

Compare tuple with sorted tuple

Here, we use a combination of the Python built-in sorted() and tuple() function to get a sorted copy of the original tuple. We compare this sorted tuple to the original tuple to check if it’s sorted or not.

Let’s look at an example.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
# check if tuple is sorted
print(t == tuple(sorted(t)))

Output:

True

We get the same result as above.

Let’s look at another example.

# create a tuple
t = (1, 4, 3, 5, 2)
# check if tuple is sorted
print(t == tuple(sorted(t)))

Output:

False

Here we get False as the output because the tuple is not sorted.

The worst-case time complexity of this method is O(NlogN).

You might also be interested in –

• Sort a Tuple in Python – With Examples
• Python – Check If List Is Sorted Or Not