l = [12,124,1,31,51,4563,76,43,532,7,98,786,63,68,2,15,764,345,2,7,85] def selectionsort(alist): blist = alist[:] # work on a copy result = list() for i in range(len(blist)): # find min element min_e = min(blist) result.append(min_e) blist.remove(min_e) print(result) return result sorted = selectionsort(l) print(sorted)