Question

I am trying to rewrite TCL code in C#. The code of concern is the following:

set list [regexp -all -inline -line {.+\d+.+\d+} $string]

In this case the regexp procedure returns a list of all matches in the string after which I am sorting this list of strings with another expression based on a numeric value in the end of the string:

set sortedList [lsort -decreasing -integer -index end  $list]

The question is, how to achieve the same in C#? I tried the following:

MatchCollection mc = Regex.Matches(inputString, regexPattern, RegexOptions.Multiline);

As I found however, I cannot sort a matchcollection directly in C# so I copied every match to an array:

string[] arrayOfMatches = new string[mc.Count];

for (int i = 0; i < mc.Count; i++)
{
arrayOfMatches[i] = mc[i].Groups[1].Value;
}

However, when I try to sort the arrayOfMatches array, I do not see the Sort method available. What am I missing and am I moving in the right direction? Thanks!

Answer 1

The Array.Sort() method is static, so you have to call it like this:

Array.Sort(arrayOfMatches, comparison);

Where comparison is either a delegate that can compare two strings or an implementation of IComparer<T> that can do the same.

But it might be easier to use LINQ:

var matches =
    from Match m in mc
    let value = m.Groups[1].Value
    let numericValue = int.Parse(value)
    orderby numericValue descending
    select value;

This assumes the whole value is the number. If I understand you correctly and you want to get a numeric value from the end of the string, you would have to add code to do that.