Sorting through an array of an array

Hello.

Each of my arrays look like this:
container[0] = [“foo”, “bar”, “baz”]
container[1] = [“doo”, “poo”, “woo”]

i’d like to sort by the second position (bar, and poo)
and of course,affecting the whole row, so that “bar” should be on top,
along with “foo” and “baz” as container[0].

What method should i use?

Thanks

On 10/13/06, Dominic S. [email protected] wrote:

What method should i use?

container.sort { |row1, row2| row1[1] <=> row2[1] }

Josh

In article [email protected],
Dominic S. [email protected] wrote:

What method should i use?
container.sort { |x,y| x[1]<=>y[1] }

On 10/13/06, Dominic S. [email protected] wrote:

What method should i use?
Actually, the better way to sort in this scenario is to use sort_by.

container.sort_by {|x| x[1]}

No need to mess with the <=> operator by hand.

Brian.

But how to do apply this to having 3 elements in the value of an array?

container.sort_by { |x,y,z| lost here
puts x

puts y

puts z

}

Brian M. wrote:

On 10/13/06, Dominic S. [email protected] wrote:

What method should i use?
Actually, the better way to sort in this scenario is to use sort_by.

container.sort_by {|x| x[1]}

No need to mess with the <=> operator by hand.

Brian.

container.sort_by {|x| x[2]}

On 10/13/06, Dominic S. [email protected] wrote:

But how to do apply this to having 3 elements in the value of an array?

container.sort_by { |x,y,z| lost here
puts x

puts y

puts z

}

Having more entries in the array doesn’t change the number of
arguments to the block.

a = []
a << [1,2,3]
a << [4,5,6]
a << [7,8,9]

a.sort_by do |element|
[element[0], element[1], element[2]]
end

If you return an Array from sort_by’s block, it will sort on the
entries of the array in order.

In this trivial case, since you’re sorting by all three, you could
just write the above as:
a.sort_by {|e| e}
(since ‘e’ is already an Array in the proper order)