Sorting my custom class in a List<T>

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DotNetNewbie - 05 Mar 2008 23:12 GMT

Hi,

I have a class that represents a Menu Tab:

public class MenuTab
{
public string Name;
public string Filename;
public int SortOrder;
}

I then load them in a Generic like:

List<MenuTab> menus = new List<MenuTab>();

menus.Add(tab);
// etc.

**Now I want to be able to sort the elements just in case things get
added int he wrong order.

menus.Sort();

How can I make the Collection sort using the SortOrder property of the
MenuTab class?

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Jon Skeet [C# MVP] - 05 Mar 2008 23:26 GMT

> I have a class that represents a Menu Tab:
>
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> public int SortOrder;
> }

Really with public fields? Can't say I like the look of that much...
anyway, moving on to your actual question :)

> I then load them in a Generic like:
>
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
> How can I make the Collection sort using the SortOrder property of the
> MenuTab class?

Is it fair to assume that the SortOrder numbers will be *reasonably*
small (so that taking one from another will always give a sane result)?
If so:

C# 2:
menus.Sort(delegate(MenuTab mt1, MenuTab mt2)
{ return mt1.SortOrder-mt2.SortOrder; }
);

C# 3:
menus.Sort( (mt1, mt2) => mt1.SortOrder-mt2.SortOrder );

(Otherwise you should call mt1.SortOrder.CompareTo(mt2.SortOrder)) but
that's a bit longer than it really needs to be.)

Alternatively, in C# 3:

menus = menus.OrderBy(tab => tab.SortOrder).ToList();

Note that that creates a *new* list though - so if you've got anything
else with a reference to the old list, it won't be updated.

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Jon Skeet - <skeet@pobox.com>
http://www.pobox.com/~skeet Blog: http://www.msmvps.com/jon.skeet
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Sorting my custom class in a List<T>

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