How to sort an NSArray with nested NSArray

Question

I have an instance of NSArray with instances of NSArray inside. The inner arrays contain only instances of NSString. I need to sort the nested arrays alphabetically by a selected index.

E.g.

@[
  @[@"test",@"B",@"test2"],
  @[@"bla",@"A",@"bla"],
  @[@"xyz",@"C",@"123"]
]

User selects index 1, Ascending sort. Result should be:

@[
  @[@"bla",@"A",@"bla"],
  @[@"test",@"B",@"test2"],
  @[@"xyz",@"C",@"123"]
]

Rob · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-16 20:15:12Z

3

You can use sortedArrayUsingComparator:

NSArray *array = @[@[@"test",@"B",@"test2"],
                   @[@"bla",@"A",@"bla"],
                   @[@"xyz",@"C",@"123"]];

NSInteger index = 1;

NSArray *sorted = [array sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id  _Nonnull obj1, id  _Nonnull obj2) {
    return [obj1[index] compare:obj2[index] options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch];
}];

Clearly, if the subarrays have different number of items or if they're not all strings, you might include some additional logic to handle that, but it illustrates the basic idea.

answered Mar 16, 2017 at 20:15

Rob

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