Sorting list of list of bytes or list of byte arrays

Question

LINQ has great OrderBy functionality with ThenBy and so on, but how could I make this work on List<List<byte>> to sort by 1st column, then by 2nd and so on.

List of list of bytes:

[0] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}
[1] = {0, 0, 2, 4, 1}
[2] = {1, 2, 2, 1, 1}
[3] = {1, 0, 2, 2, 2}

Actually I did same thing simply when I made string[] , but converting byte to string and then back was messy and the results where different for some reason.

I want to get:

[0] = {0, 0, 2, 4, 1}
[1] = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4}
[2] = {1, 0, 2, 2, 2}
[3] = {1, 2, 2, 1, 1}

Is it possible to use some LINQ or any other already made library to do that or maybe any suggestions how to make it manually?

Answer 1

You could start by implementing an IComparer<IList<byte>>. E.g. (omitting null handling for brevity):

public class ByteListComparer : IComparer<IList<byte>>
{
    public int Compare(IList<byte> x, IList<byte> y)
    {
        int result;
        for(int index = 0; index<Min(x.Count, y.Count); index++)
        {
            result = x[index].CompareTo(y[index]);
            if (result != 0) return result;
        }
        return x.Count.CompareTo(y.Count);
    }
}

The above is untested (not even compiled), but should be enough to get you started.

You can then use OrderBy on your main list, passing in an instance of this comparer:

input.OrderBy(x => x, new ByteListComparer())

Answer 2

By the way, in marked answer there is such line

for(int index = 0; index < Math.Min(x.Count, y.Count); index++)

so, function

Math.Min(x.Count, y.Count)

will be called as many times as iteration lasts.

Must be

int min=Math.Min(x.Count, y.Count);
for(int index = 0; index < min; index++)