BUG: Fix sorting behavior of DataFrame.join on list arguments

doc/source/whatsnew/v3.0.0.rst

@@ -1190,6 +1190,7 @@ Reshaping
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.combine` with non-unique columns incorrectly raising (:issue:`51340`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.explode` producing incorrect result for :class:`pyarrow.large_list` type (:issue:`61091`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.join` inconsistently setting result index name (:issue:`55815`)
+- Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.join` not producing the correct row order when joining with a list of Series/DataFrames (:issue:`62954`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.join` when a :class:`DataFrame` with a :class:`MultiIndex` would raise an ``AssertionError`` when :attr:`MultiIndex.names` contained ``None``. (:issue:`58721`)
 - Bug in :meth:`DataFrame.merge` where merging on a column containing only ``NaN`` values resulted in an out-of-bounds array access (:issue:`59421`)
 - Bug in :meth:`Series.combine_first` incorrectly replacing ``None`` entries with ``NaN`` (:issue:`58977`)

pandas/core/frame.py

@@ -11393,12 +11393,18 @@ def join(
 
             # join indexes only using concat
             if can_concat:
-                if how == "left":
+                if how == "left" or how == "right":
                     res = concat(
                         frames, axis=1, join="outer", verify_integrity=True, sort=sort
                     )
-                    return res.reindex(self.index)
+                    index = self.index if how == "left" else frames[-1].index
+                    if sort:
+                        index = index.sort_values()
+                    result = res.reindex(index)
+                    return result
                 else:
+                    if how == "outer":
+                        sort = True
                     return concat(
                         frames, axis=1, join=how, verify_integrity=True, sort=sort
                     )
@@ -11409,6 +11415,7 @@ def join(
                 joined = merge(
                     joined,
                     frame,
+                    sort=sort,
                     how=how,
                     left_index=True,
                     right_index=True,

pandas/tests/frame/methods/test_join.py

@@ -395,29 +395,6 @@ def test_join_list_series(float_frame):
     tm.assert_frame_equal(result, float_frame)
 
 
-def test_suppress_future_warning_with_sort_kw(sort):
-    sort_kw = sort
-    a = DataFrame({"col1": [1, 2]}, index=["c", "a"])
-
-    b = DataFrame({"col2": [4, 5]}, index=["b", "a"])
-
-    c = DataFrame({"col3": [7, 8]}, index=["a", "b"])
-
-    expected = DataFrame(
-        {
-            "col1": {"a": 2.0, "b": float("nan"), "c": 1.0},
-            "col2": {"a": 5.0, "b": 4.0, "c": float("nan")},
-            "col3": {"a": 7.0, "b": 8.0, "c": float("nan")},
-        }
-    )
-    if sort_kw is False:
-        expected = expected.reindex(index=["c", "a", "b"])
-
-    with tm.assert_produces_warning(None):
-        result = a.join([b, c], how="outer", sort=sort_kw)
-    tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
-
-
 class TestDataFrameJoin:
     def test_join(self, multiindex_dataframe_random_data):
         frame = multiindex_dataframe_random_data

pandas/tests/reshape/merge/test_join.py

@@ -671,6 +671,49 @@ def _check_diff_index(df_list, result, exp_index):
         with pytest.raises(ValueError, match=msg):
             df_list[0].join(df_list[1:], on="a")
 
+    @pytest.mark.parametrize("how", ["left", "right", "inner", "outer"])
+    def test_join_many_sort_unique(self, how, sort):
+        # https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/pull/62954
+        df = DataFrame({"a": [1, 2, 3]}, index=[1, 0, 2])
+        df2 = DataFrame({"b": [4, 5, 6]}, index=[2, 0, 1])
+        if how == "right":
+            expected = DataFrame({"a": [3, 2, 1], "b": [4, 5, 6]}, index=[2, 0, 1])
+        else:
+            expected = DataFrame({"a": [1, 2, 3], "b": [6, 5, 4]}, index=[1, 0, 2])
+        if how == "outer" or sort:
+            # outer always sorts.
+            expected = expected.sort_index()
+        result = df.join([df2], how=how, sort=sort)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
+    @pytest.mark.parametrize("how", ["left", "right", "inner", "outer"])
+    def test_join_many_sort_nonunique(self, how, sort):
+        # https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/pull/62954
+        df = DataFrame({"a": [1, 2, 3]}, index=[3, 0, 0])
+        df2 = DataFrame({"b": [4, 5, 6]}, index=[2, 0, 1])
+        if how == "inner":
+            expected = DataFrame({"a": [2, 3], "b": [5, 5]}, index=[0, 0])
+        elif how == "left":
+            expected = DataFrame(
+                {"a": [1, 2, 3], "b": [np.nan, 5.0, 5.0]}, index=[3, 0, 0]
+            )
+        elif how == "right":
+            expected = DataFrame(
+                {"a": [np.nan, 2.0, 3.0, np.nan], "b": [4, 5, 5, 6]}, index=[2, 0, 0, 1]
+            )
+        else:
+            expected = DataFrame(
+                {
+                    "a": [2.0, 3.0, np.nan, np.nan, 1.0],
+                    "b": [5.0, 5.0, 6.0, 4.0, np.nan],
+                },
+                index=[0, 0, 1, 2, 3],
+            )
+        if sort:
+            expected = expected.sort_index()
+        result = df.join([df2], how=how, sort=sort)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
     def test_join_many_mixed(self):
         df = DataFrame(
             np.random.default_rng(2).standard_normal((8, 4)),