pandas: ENH: Raise error on ascending='False'

Is your feature request related to a problem?

when sort_values ascending parameter is set to a string (df.sort_values(col_name, ascending=‘False’) it does not error although it’s meaningless, this could be quite confusing.

Describe the solution you’d like

Raise an error if ascending is equal to values that are not boolean

API breaking implications

Error raising

Describe alternatives you’ve considered

Warning is also good, but I think error makes more sense

Additional context

for an hour I was wondering why ascending=‘False’ is not working

isinstance('False', bool) :)

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 3 years ago
Comments: 15 (3 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

BUG: Dataframe.sort_values not raising ValueError for ascending-incompatible value (#41634) — committed to gaikwadrahul20/pandas by gaikwadrahul20 3 years ago
BUG: Series.sort_values not raising ValueError for ascending-incompatible value (#41634) — committed to gaikwadrahul20/pandas by gaikwadrahul20 3 years ago

Most upvoted comments

You can use sorted() function here. Code:

a = ("h", "b", "a", "c", "f", "d", "e", "g")
x = sorted(a)
print(x)

Output: ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h']

Lokeshrathi on May 24, 2021