placebut don' return the list as result (technicallythey both return value called noneif you say something like = append( )you won' get the modified value of (in factyou'll lose the reference to the list altogether!when you use attributes such as append and sortobjects are changed as side effectso there' no reason to reassign partly because of such constraintssorting is also available in recent pythons as builtin functionwhich sorts any collection (not just listsand returns new list for the result (instead of in-place changes) ['abc''abd''abe'sorted(lkey=str lowerreverse=true['abe''abd''abc'sorting built-in ['abc''abd''abe'sorted([ lower(for in ]reverse=true['abe''abd''abc'pretransform itemsdiffersnotice the last example here--we can convert to lowercase prior to the sort with list comprehensionbut the result does not contain the original list' values as it does with the key argument the latter is applied temporarily during the sortinstead of changing the values to be sorted altogether as we move alongwe'll see contexts in which the sorted built-in can sometimes be more useful than the sort method other common list methods like stringslists have other methods that perform other specialized operations for instancereverse reverses the list in-placeand the extend and pop methods insert multiple items at and delete an item from the end of the listrespectively there is also reversed built-in function that works much like sorted and returns new result objectbut it must be wrapped in list call in both and here because its result is an iterator that produces results on demand (more on iterators later) [ extend([ ] [ pop( [ reverse( [ list(reversed( )[ add many items at end (like in-place +delete and return last item (by default- in-place reversal method reversal built-in with result (iteratortechnicallythe extend method always iterates through and adds each item in an iterable objectwhereas append simply adds single item as is without iterating through it -- distinction that will be more meaningful by for nowit' enough to know that extend adds many itemsand append adds one in some types of programs lists and dictionaries