I assume you're using an NSMutableArray, because an NSArray is immutable.
When you sort something, you want the end result to be arranged as
x1 <= x2 <= x3 <= x4 <= ... <= xN
How to define this <=
? There are 3 solutions in ObjC.
1. -sortUsingSelector:
[arr sortUsingSelector:@selector(foo:)]
means that its elements will be compared as*
x <= y is equivalent to [x foo:y] <= 0
For example, to sort a list of strings case-insensitively, you use [arr sortUsingSelector:@selector(caseInsensitiveCompare:)]
.
2. -sortUsingFunction:context:
This is similar to -sortUsingSelector:
, but it uses a function pointer as input. [arr sortUsingFunction:funcptr context:ctx]
means that its elements will be compared as
x <= y is equivalent to funcptr(x, y, ctx) <= 0
3. -sortUsingDescriptors:
This is the most complicated one. It takes a list of NSSortDescriptors which describe the expected order of the properties. One basic example:
NSSortDescriptor* desc = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"distance" ascending:YES];
[arr sortUsingDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObject:desc]];
[desc release];
the descriptor tells the sort routine to "sort by the key distance
in ascending order".
Suppose there are 2 keys, integers x
ascending then and strings y
descending, then you may write
NSSortDescriptor* dx = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"x" ascending:YES];
NSSortDescriptor* dy = [[NSSortDescriptor alloc] initWithKey:@"y" ascending:NO selector:@selector(caseInsensitiveCompare:)];
[arr sortUsingDescriptors:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:x, y, nil]];
[dx release];
[dy release];
and so on.
Note: * Actually you should only return -1, 0 or 1.
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