I have this LINQ Query:
TempRecordList = new ArrayList(TempRecordList.Cast<string>().OrderBy(s => s.Substring(9, 30)).ToArray());
It works great and performs sorting in a way that's accurate but a little different from what I want. Among the the result of the query I see something like this:
Palm-Bouter, Peter
Palmer-Johnson, Sean
Whereas what I really need is to have names sorted like this:
Palmer-Johnson, Sean
Palm-Bouter, Peter
Basically I want the '-' character to be treated as being lower than the character so that names that contain it show up later in an ascending search.
Here is another example. I get:
Dias, Reginald
DiBlackley, Anton
Instead of:
DiBlackley, Anton
Dias, Reginald
As you can see, again, the order is switched due to how the uppercase letter 'B' is treated.
So my question is, what do I need to change in my LINQ query to make it return results in the order I specified. Any feedback would be greatly appreaciated.
By the way, I tried using s.Substring(9, 30).ToLower() but that didn't help.
Thank you!
To customize the sorting order you will need to create a comparer class that implements IComparer<string>
interface. The OrderBy()
method takes comparer as second parameter.
internal sealed class NameComparer : IComparer<string> {
private static readonly NameComparer DefaultInstance = new NameComparer();
static NameComparer() { }
private NameComparer() { }
public static NameComparer Default {
get { return DefaultInstance; }
}
public int Compare(string x, string y) {
int length = Math.Min(x.Length, y.Length);
for (int i = 0; i < length; ++i) {
if (x[i] == y[i]) continue;
if (x[i] == '-') return 1;
if (y[i] == '-') return -1;
return x[i].CompareTo(y[i]);
}
return x.Length - y.Length;
}
}
This works at least with the following test cases:
var names = new[] {
"Palmer-Johnson, Sean",
"Palm-Bouter, Peter",
"Dias, Reginald",
"DiBlackley, Anton",
};
var sorted = names.OrderBy(name => name, NameComparer.Default).ToList();
// sorted:
// [0]: "DiBlackley, Anton"
// [1]: "Dias, Reginald"
// [2]: "Palmer-Johnson, Sean"
// [3]: "Palm-Bouter, Peter"
As already mentioned, the OrderBy()
method takes a comparer as a second parameter.
For strings, you don't necessarily have to implement an IComparer<string>
. You might be fine with System.StringComparer.CurrentCulture
(or one of the others in System.StringComparer
).
In your exact case, however, there is no built-in comparer which will handle also the -
after letter sort order.
OrderBy()
returns results in ascending order.
e
comes before h
, thus the first result (remember you're comparing on a substring that starts with the character in the 9th position...not the beginning of the string) and i
comes before y
, thus the second. Case sensitivity has nothing to do with it.
If you want results in descending order, you should use OrderByDescending()
:
TempRecordList.Cast<string>
.OrderByDescending(s => s.Substring(9, 30)).ToArray());
You might want to just implement a custom IComparer object that will give a custom priority to special, upper-case and lower-case characters.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.collections.icomparer.aspx