OrderBy numbers that are strings (cannot convert to int)

Question

I'm trying to sort a List<string> that contains a list of elements that are each numbers followed by letters. This is why each element can not simply be converted to an int. The list generates at run-time, but for example, the list might contain elements such as:

10 dog, 53 cow, 2 crow, 29 horse, 12 rabbit, 107 frog, 35 cat, 7 dragon

I've tried sorting like this:

public void Compare()
{   
   sortedList = sortedList.OrderBy(g => g).ToList(); 
}

Results:

10 dog, 107 frog, 12 rabbit, 2 crow, 29 horse, 35 cat, 53 cow, 7 dragon

Clearly it is sorting alphabetically because in this example 107 came before 12 with the "10"in 107 being smaller than 12. But I need to sort it in a way that it would return in the order of the numbers preceding the word.

I need this example to return:

2 crow, 7 dragon, 10 dog, 12 rabbit, 29 horse, 35 cat, 53 cow, 107 frog

I'm pretty new to coding, and this has me completely stumped. Any suggestions on how I can achieve my desired results?

Answer 1

you can extract the data you want and then do the order by

var sorted = list
    .Select(x => new
    {
        Splited = x.Split(),
        Raw = x
    }) //split the string and keep the raw value
    .Select(x => new
    {
        Count = int.Parse(x.Splited[0]), // extract the number 
        Raw = x.Raw
    })
    .OrderBy(x => x.Count) //order by that number
    .Select(x => x.Raw); //select raw value

Answer 2

lst = lst.OrderBy(x => Convert.ToInt32(x.Split()[0])).ToList();