Sorting Arrays

[Bob Sneidar]

Has anyone come across a need to sort a numbered array by the values of the different keys? Here you go. Keep in mind that there is no error checking so I have no idea what would happen if you provided a sort key that didn’t exist in the array. 

on sortNumberedArray @pArrayDataA, pSortKeys
   /*
   Provide a numbered array of key value pairs and a comma delimited list of the sort order you want. 
   Ex. "filename,version numeric descending". 
   The result will be numbered array resorted by the sort order you provide. 
   */
   put the keys of pArrayDataA into tKeyList
   sort tKeyList numeric ascending
   put the number of items of pSortKeys into tSortKeyCount
   
   -- convert the sort keys to an array
   repeat with i = the number of items of pSortKeys down to 1
      put item i of pSortKeys into tSortIndex
      
      repeat with x = the number of words of tSortIndex down to 1
         put word x of tSortIndex into tKeyWord
         
         switch 
            case tKeyWord is among the items of "asc,ascending,desc,descending"
               put tKeyWord into tSortKeysA [i] ["sortorder"] 
               break
            case tKeyWord is "International,Numeric,datetime,text,binary"
               put tKeyWord into tSortKeysA [i] ["sorttype"]
               break
            default
               put word 1 to x of tSortIndex into tSortKeysA [i] ["sortvalue"]
         end switch
      end repeat
   end repeat
   
   -- build a comma delimited list of sort keys from the passed array
   put the keys of pArrayDataA into tInputKeyList
   sort tInputKeyList numeric ascending
   repeat for each line tLine in tInputKeyList
      put the keys of tSortKeysA into tSortKeyList
      sort lines of tSortKeyList numeric
      repeat for each line tSortLine in tSortKeyList
         put tSortKeysA [tSortLine] ["sortvalue"] into tSortValue
         put pArrayDataA [tLine] [tSortValue] into item tSortLine of line tLine of tSortValueList
      end repeat
      put "," & tLine after tSortValueList 
   end repeat
   
   -- sort the list
   put the keys of tSortKeysA into tSortKeyList
   sort tSortKeyList numeric descending
   repeat for each line tKey in tSortKeyList
      put "sort lines of tSortValueList" && tSortKeysA [tKey] ["sortorder"] && tSortKeysA [tKey] ["sorttype"] && \
            "by item" && tkey && "of each" into tSortCommand
      do tSortCommand
   end repeat
   
   -- convert the list back to an array
   repeat for each line tLine in tSortValueList
      add 1 to tArrayCounter
      put item -1 of tLine into tArrayIndex
      put pArrayDataA [tArrayIndex] into tOutArrayA [tArrayCounter]
   end repeat
   
   put tOutArrayA into pArrayDataA
end sortNumberedArray

Bob S