D = {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5} L = sorted([D[s] for s in D])

In the expression:

D = {'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': 3, 'd': 4, 'e': 5}
L = sorted([D[s] for s in D])

the following happens:

• [D[s] for s in D] creates a list of the dictionary D's values in the order of key traversal (in Python 3.7+ the order of keys is preserved, so this will be [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).
• sorted(...) sorts this list in ascending order.

In this case, the list is already sorted, so L will be [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

If the values were in a different order, sorted would guarantee an ascending sorted list of the dictionary's values.

Example:

D = {'a': 3, 'b': 1, 'c': 5}
L = sorted([D[s] for s in D])  # L will be [1, 3, 5]