JavaScript - Array sorting only first letter/Only first number

Question

I wrote a program in JavaScript that gathers input from user and sorts it alphabetically or if numbers alphanumerically. It's uses an array and sorts that array but JavaScript only sorts it by the first character in the number or word. So if 22, 1, and 3 was entered, it would sort it by 1,22,3 because of being sorted by first character. The same goes with words. How would I get past this? If you think my code would help you tell me how, here you go.

var input = null;
var words = new Array();

function startApp()
{
    alert("Welcome to Word/Number Sorter 1.0");
    alert("Enter one word/number at a time in the next prompts. Enter passw0rd to finish/stop.");

    do {

        input = prompt("Enter word...enter passw0rd to exit.");
        if ( input != "passw0rd" ){
            words.push(input);
        }
        else{
            break;
        }
    }while( input != "passw0rd" );

    var newW = words.sort();

    for ( var i = 0; i < newW.length; i++ )
    {
        document.writeln(newW[i], "<br>");
    }
}

possible duplicate of natural sort of text and numbers, JavaScript — Patrick Evans
– Patrick Evans, Commented Sep 22, 2013 at 2:39

georg · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-22 02:58:52Z

1

To sort numerically you need a special sorting callback:

[22,1,3].sort(function(a, b) { return a - b })
> [1, 3, 22]

If you want "natural sorting", it goes like this:

function natcmp(a, b) {
    var ra = a.match(/\D+|\d+/g);
    var rb = b.match(/\D+|\d+/g);
    var r = 0;

    while(!r && ra.length && rb.length) {
        var x = ra.shift(), y = rb.shift(),
            nx = parseInt(x), ny = parseInt(y);

        if(isNaN(nx) || isNaN(ny))
            r = x > y ? 1 : (x < y ? -1 : 0);
        else
            r = nx - ny;
    }
    return r || ra.length - rb.length;
}

ls = ['img35', 'img1', 'img2', 'img22', 'img3', 'img2.gif', 'foobar']
console.log(ls.sort(natcmp))

> ["foobar","img1","img2","img2.gif","img3","img22","img35"]

edited Sep 22, 2013 at 2:58

answered Sep 22, 2013 at 2:41

georg

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1 Comment

freemann098 Over a year ago

Thank you, but then how would I fix the word sorting?

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