# Pine's tutorial "Word Sorter" exercise **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [February 19, 2007, 7:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pines-tutorial-word-sorter-exercise/86090 "2007-02-19T19:46:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Randy\_Shipp](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@Randy\_Shipp](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Randy_Shipp)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2007, 7:46pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pines-tutorial-word-sorter-exercise/86090/1 "2007-02-19T19:46:35Z")
On Apr 1 2006, 8:12 pm, Jan\_K [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > ## puts input.sort * * * To reset slightly, this is an exercise that tells you to accept words from the user until they just hit Enter, then alphabetize the list. My problem with the exercise is that the sort method alphabetizes capital letters before lowercase letters. Therefore, if input == [ant, bear, Zebra], the output of puts input.sort is Zebra ant bear …which is clearly not what most users will expect. Short of changing the line in the program to read input.push gets.chomp.downcase (thus altering the entered words in a possibly undesirable way), how can we get the sort to work the way we might expect? Thanks in advance. Randy… ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Shipp](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@Randy\_Shipp](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Randy_Shipp)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2007, 7:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pines-tutorial-word-sorter-exercise/86090/2 "2007-02-19T19:54:36Z")
#sort and #sort\_by accept blocks that tell how to do the comparison, so: puts input.sort\_by{|a| a.downcase} is the simplest solution. PLUG: The RubyMentor project is looking for newbies to help! [http://rubymentor.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl](http://rubymentor.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl)