How do I sort a two-dimensional (rectangular) array in C#?

Question

I have a two-dimensional array (of Strings) which make up my data table (of rows and columns). I want to sort this array by any column. I tried to find an algorithm for doing this in C#, but have not been successful.

Any help is appreciated.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/232395/how-do-i-sort-a-two-dimensional-rectangular-array-in-c

Answer 1

Load your two-dimensional string array into an actual DataTable (System.Data.DataTable), and then use the DataTable object's Select() method to generate a sorted array of DataRow objects (or use a DataView for a similar effect).

// assumes stringdata[row, col] is your 2D string array
DataTable dt = new DataTable();
// assumes first row contains column names:
for (int col = 0; col < stringdata.GetLength(1); col++)
{
    dt.Columns.Add(stringdata[0, col]);
}
// load data from string array to data table:
for (rowindex = 1; rowindex < stringdata.GetLength(0); rowindex++)
{
    DataRow row = dt.NewRow();
    for (int col = 0; col < stringdata.GetLength(1); col++)
    {
        row[col] = stringdata[rowindex, col];
    }
    dt.Rows.Add(row);
}
// sort by third column:
DataRow[] sortedrows = dt.Select("", "3");
// sort by column name, descending:
sortedrows = dt.Select("", "COLUMN3 DESC");

You could also write your own method to sort a two-dimensional array. Both approaches would be useful learning experiences, but the DataTable approach would get you started on learning a better way of handling tables of data in a C# application.