How to sort a list that contains letters with diacritic markings?
Words used in this example are made up.
Now I get a list that displays this:
- báb
- baz
- bez
But I want to get a list that displays this:
- baz
- báb
- bez
Showing the diacritic as a letter on its own. Is there a way to do this in C#?
If you set the culture of the current thread to the language you want to sort for then this should work automagically (assuming you don't want some special customized sort order). Like this
List<string> mylist;
....
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("pl-PL");
mylist.Sort();
Should get you the list sorted according to the Polish culture settings.
Update: If the culture settings don't sort it the way you want then another option is to implement your own string comparer.
Update 2: String comparer example:
public class DiacriticStringComparer : IComparer<string>
{
private static readonly HashSet<char> _Specials = new HashSet<char> { 'é', 'ń', 'ó', 'ú' };
public int Compare(string x, string y)
{
// handle special cases first: x == null and/or y == null, x.Equals(y)
...
var lengthToCompare = Math.Min(x.Length, y.Length);
for (int i = 0; i < lengthToCompare; ++i)
{
var cx = x[i];
var cy = y[i];
if (cx == cy) continue;
if (_Specials.Contains(cx) || _Specials.Contains(cy))
{
// handle special diacritics comparison
...
}
else
{
// cx must be unequal to cy -> can only be larger or smaller
return cx < cy ? -1 : 1;
}
}
// once we are here the strings are equal up to lengthToCompare characters
// we have already dealt with the strings being equal so now one must be shorter than the other
return x.Length < y.Length ? -1 : 1;
}
}
Disclaimer: I haven't tested it but it should give you the general idea. Also char.CompareTo() does not compare lexicographically but according to one source I found < and > does - can't guarantee it though. Worst case you have to convert cx and cy into strings and then use the default string comparison.
