Name
Array.sort( ) — sort the elements of an array
Availability
JavaScript 1.1; JScript 2.0; ECMAScript v1
Synopsis
array
.sort( )array
.sort(orderfunc
)
Arguments
-
orderfunc
An optional function used to specify the sorting order.
Returns
A reference to the array. Note that the array is sorted in place and no copy is made.
Description
The sort( )
method sorts the elements of
array
in place -- no copy of the array
is made. If sort( )
is called with no arguments,
the elements of the array are arranged in alphabetical order (more
precisely, the order determined by the character encoding). To do
this, elements are first converted to strings, if necessary, so that
they can be compared.
If you want to sort the array elements in some other order, you must
supply a comparison function that compares two values and returns a
number indicating their relative order. The comparison function
should take two arguments, a
and
b
, and should return one of the following:
A value less than zero, if, according to your sort criteria,
a
is “less than”b
and should appear beforeb
in the sorted array.Zero, if
a
andb
are equivalent for the purposes of this sort.A value greater than zero, if
a
is “greater than”b
for the purposes of the sort.
Note that undefined elements of an array are always sorted to the end
of the array. This is true even if you provide a custom ordering
function: undefined values are never passed to the
orderfunc
you supply.
Example
The following code shows how you might write a comparison ...
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