I'm trying to sort a list of tuples.  Most of the tuples are pairs of US state names.  However, some of the tuples have None instead of the 2nd name.  I want the items sorted first by the 1st element, and then by the 2nd element, BUT I want the None to count as LARGER than any name.  Thus, I want to see [('Alabama', 'Iowa'), ('Alabama', None)] rather than [('Alabama', None), ('Alabama', 'Iowa')].  I defined the following comparitor:

def cmp_keys (k1, k2):
    retval = cmp(k1[0], k2[0])
    if retval == 0:
        if k2[1] is None:
            retval = -1
        if k1[1] is None:
            retval = 1
        else:
            retval = cmp(k1[1], k2[1])
                
    return retval

However, once I sort using this, some of the elements are out of order.

If that's the actual code you're using, it has a bug:  the "if k2[1] is None" test is useless, since regardless of whether it's true or false, the next `if` suite overwrites `retval`.  You probably meant

    elif k1[1] ...
    ^^

instead of

    if k1[1] ...

Does that fix your problem?

If not, please augment the bug report with the _complete_ code you're actually using, a sample problematic input, the exact output you're expecting, and the exact output you're seeing instead.  We're not telepathic ;-)