How to sort a string-indexed-table after the strings in the indexes?

[Guest Carnifex]

So, I have a table similar to this:

t={["playername1"]=1,["playername2"]=0,["playername3"]=0,["playername4"]=0}

and i want to sort this table in lexicographical order after the strings=player-names in the indexes of the table.

How can I do this, because with "for i,m in t..." I get a seemingly random order of the playernames?

BTW: I need this for my new addon TS3Viewer.

[SLA]

Are you sure it is REALLY string-indexed? (NOT WString-indexed, because WStrings are userdata) ?

If there are WString indexes, then it is epic fail.

[Guest Carnifex]

no, they are string indexed (ts does not know wstrings), but they are sorted in the for loop not after the alphabet, but in the row I write them into the table

so for example:

t["d"]=1

t["a"]=2

t["z"]=0

for n,i in t do

LogInfo(n)

end

returns

d

a

z

and not

a

d

z

[duvo]

Code:

t = {}
t ["d"] =1
t ["a"] =2
t ["z"] =0

local function Sort( tab, dir )
local t = {}
for k in pairs( tab ) do table.insert( t, k ) end
if dir then table.sort( t, function( a, b ) return a > b end ) else table.sort( t ) end
--table.sort( t, function( a, b ) return dir and a > b or a < b end )
for _, v in ipairs( t ) do LogInfo( tab [ v ]  ) end
end

Sort( t )

upd: Commented line was replaced by a common if-else statement, because, in this case, using and-or construction with existing "dir" breaks the sort function.

[SLA]

It should work.

[Guest Carnifex]

Yes, I've also had a similar idea of a alternative sorting algorithm.

But there is no solution for sorting it in-place, right?

[SLA]

Sorting by VALUES it extremely easy, like:

Code:

table.sort( t, function(a, return a.name < b.name end )

but sorting by KEYS is more tricky:

http://lua-users.org/wiki/SortedIteration

Anyway, you will need some extra function(s) to do that. But Duvodas provided a much simplier solution.

P.S. Don't look at GuildGui1b TERRIBLE sorting function. It is the WORST example, because it sorts by VALUES without use of table.sort(). It just needs a total rewrite, but I was too lazy to touch it yet... There are good sorting examples in DarkDPSMeter.

[Guest Carnifex]

BTW: Is there with our access to lua models a way to check, if the file exists before running dofile(file)?