Accessibility
 
Home > Products > Flash > Support > ActionScript Dictionary
Flash Icon Macromedia Flash Support Center - ActionScript dictionary
Array.sort

Availability
Flash Player 5.

Usage

 myArray  .sort([  compareFunction]  ) 

Parameters
compareFunction An optional comparison function used to determine the sorting order of elements in an array. Given the elements A and B, the orderfunc parameter can have one of the following three values:

-1 if A appears before B in the sorted sequence
0 if A = B
1 if A appears after B in the sorted sequence

Returns
Nothing.

Description
Method; sorts the array in place, without making a copy. If you omit the compareFunction parameter, Flash sorts the elements in place using the < comparison operator.

Example
The following example uses Array.sort without specifying the compareFunction parameter:

 var fruits = ["oranges", "apples", "strawberries", "pineapples", "cherries"]; 
 trace(fruits.join()); 
 fruits.sort(); 
 trace(fruits.join()); 

Output:

 oranges,apples,strawberries,pineapples,cherries 
 displays apples,cherries,oranges,pineapples,strawberries 

The following example uses Array.sort with a specified order function.

var passwords =[
"gary:foo",
"mike:bar",
"john:snafu",
"steve:yuck",
"daniel:1234"
];
function order (a,b){
//Entries to be sorted are in form
//name:password
//Sort using only the name part of the
//entry as a key.
var name1 =a.split(":")[0 ];
var name2 =b.split(":")[0 ];
if (name1 <name2){
return -1;
}else if (name1 >name2){
return 1;
}else {
return 0;
}
}
for (var i=0;i<passwords.length;i++){
trace (passwords.join());
}
passwords.sort(order);
trace ("Sorted:");
for (var i=0;i<passwords.length;i++){
trace (passwords.join());
}

Running the previous code displays the following result in the Output window.

 daniel:1234 
 gary:foo 
 john:snafu 
 mike:bar 
 steve:yuck 

To Table of Contents Back to Previous document Forward to next document