Do not forget to put commas between the elements of a list

myVar = [['blueberries','fruit','5.20'],
         ['bean sprouts','vegetable','9.25'],
         ['tulip','flower','8.93']]

Now you could use the sorted builtin as Andy Knight suggested in the comments and specify a key function to use for comparing items.

Sort list by price and get a copy of the sorted list

sorted(myVar, key=lambda x: float(x[2]))

Sort list by item name

sorted(myVar, key=lambda x: x[0])

l=[[1,4],
[2,7],
[10,1],
[1,2],
[10,6],
[2,1]]
print(sorted(l,key=lambda x: (x[0],x[1]))) # use lambda to sort by "x[0]"-> first element of the sublists or x[1] -> second element, if its a tie
[[1, 2], [1, 4], [2, 1], [2, 7], [10, 1], [10, 6]]

Or simply sorted(l) of l.sort() as your elements sort naturally.

A better example would be to sort by the second value only:

print(sorted(l,key=lambda x: (x[1])))
[[10, 1], [2, 1], [1, 2], [1, 4], [10, 6], [2, 7]]

Based on the comments, looks like I have to do this when appending:

mylist.append([file, value])

And for sorting, I have to do this:

mylist.sort(key=lambda mylist: mylist[1])

This should work:

a_list = [['name1', 5, 6, 3, 7], ['name3', 2, 6, 3, 6], ['name3', 2, 10, 8, 5]]
a_list.sort(key=lambda x: sum(x[1:]), reverse=True)
print(a_list)

Output:

[['name3', 2, 10, 8, 5], ['name1', 5, 6, 3, 7], ['name3', 2, 6, 3, 6]]

Python's sort function is stable, which means that if two elements compare equal to each other, their relative positions don't change. Elements only switch positions if they compare unequal to each other.

Additionally, sorting takes an optional key parameter, which is a function that determines which values the sort should compare. You can define a full function for this, but it's common to define a short lambda function if you're only going to use it once.

Put these together, and you can first sort the lists by their second elements, then sort them a second time by their first elements. The relative positions from the first sort will be maintained after the second.

a = [
    ['abc', 5],
    ['abd', 21],
    ['abb', 10],
    ['abc', 3],
    ['abb', 15],
    ['abd', 20]
]

# Sort by second element first, in descending order
a = sorted(a, key=lambda x: x[1], reverse=True)  

# Then sort by first element, in ascending order
a = sorted(a, key=lambda x: x[0])  

print(a)  # [['abb', 15], ['abb', 10], ['abc', 5], ['abc', 3], ['abd', 21], ['abd', 20]]