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Sorting Arrays of Strings in JavaScript

Banesa Guaderrama on December 13, 2018

Sorting Arrays of Strings In JavaScript arrays have a sort( ) method that sorts the array items into an alphabetical order. The following illu...

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Klemen Slavič • Dec 14 '18 • Edited

There's a big caveat to this method of string sorting: it doesn't take Unicode and non-English alphabets into account. Depending on your application, you might want to consider using the String::localeCompare() instead which has built-in support for things like language-specific sort ordering, ignoring cases or diacritics:

const strings = ['č','é','A','b','Đ'];

const defaultSort = Array.from(strings).sort();

const simpleSort = Array.from(strings).sort((a, b) => a - b);

const localeSort = Array.from(strings).sort((a, b) => {
  return a.localeCompare(b, 'en', { sensitivity: 'base' });
});

console.log(defaultSort);
console.log(simpleSort);
console.log(localeSort);

Charles Wray • Feb 7 '20

Love this reply. It's exactly what I was looking for. I do want to comment that there is a typo in case someone else tries to use this like I did and it didnt work. In the localeSort variable assignment it should be

return a.localeCompare(b, 'en', { sensitivity: 'base' });

Ricardo Aguilar • Oct 19 '20

Thanks! both anwser are awesome!

Maprangsoft • Apr 5 '22

thank you.

christophdellavalle • Jan 20 '21

I know it is an extension of the topic... How can I add an argument to the callback-function? I want to sort Objects according to their properties.

example of not working dummy code:
var sortprop='weight';
animals.sort(function (a, b, sortprop){....});

Ferdie Sletering • Jul 7 '21

Use a compare closure function.

const data = [ {name: 'Bob', age: 22 }, { name: 'Jason', age:33 }];
const newData = data.sort( compare('name') )

function compare(prop) {
    return function (a,b) {
    console.log(prop) // outputs -> name
    return -1; // sort stuff
  }
}

Maprangsoft • Apr 5 '22

thank you.