How to sort an array in JavaScript

Question

I am not using an associative array. I'm using 1d array like this,

array("1,a","5,b","2,c","8,d","6,f");

How can I sort this array?

The result should be,

array("1,a","2,c","5,b","6,f","8,d");

Answer 1

sort() without a custom sorting function will sort it how you wish (lexicographically).

>>> ["1,a","5,b","2,c","8,d","6,f"].sort();
["1,a", "2,c", "5,b", "6,f", "8,d"]

Note that this will sort the original array. You can make a shallow copy with slice().

If any of your numbers are larger than 9, and you want to sort it via the ordinal of the number, you will need a custom sorting function.

["1,a","5,b","2,c","8,d","6,f"].sort(function(a, b) {
    return parseInt(a, 10) - parseInt(b, 10);
});

Answer 2

Use array.sort() built-in JS function. Documentation here: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_sort.asp