list[I] becomes a list instead of an item

I am a high school student doing a simple merge sort algorithm, but I encountered below error message. Help is much appreciated!

File "main.py", line 22, in mergesort
if l_list[i] <= r_list[j]:

TypeError: ‘<=’ not supported between instances of ‘int’ and ‘list’

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Here’s my code:

list = [1, 3, 5, 6, 2]

def mergesort(list):
    n = len(list)

    if n <= 1:
      return

    mid_cut = n // 2
    l_list = list[:mid_cut]
    r_list = list[mid_cut:]
    mergesort(l_list)
    mergesort(r_list)

    i = 0
    j = 0
    list.clear()

    while i < len(l_list) and j < len(r_list):
      if l_list[i] <= r_list[j]:
        list.append(l_list[i])
        i += 1
      else:
        list.append(r_list[j])
        j += 1

    if i < len(l_list):
      list.append(l_list[i:])
    else:
      list.append(r_list[j:])

mergesort(list)

I tried extracting items from two local lists and compare them, but one of the "item" turned into a list somehow.

>Solution :

In this code, you append slices to list.

if i < len(l_list):
    list.append(l_list[i:])
else:
    list.append(r_list[j:])

Use list.extend(…) instead:

if i < len(l_list):
    list.extend(l_list[i:])
else:
    list.extend(r_list[j:])