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Asked: 2026-06-17T07:58:14+00:00

I am trying to sort the following two dimensional array in a descending order

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I am trying to sort the following two dimensional array in a descending order by the first column:

wordsAndCount = [[0,"string"],[4,"string"],[31,"string"],[1,"string"],[3,"string"]];
wordsAndCount.sort();
wordsAndCount.reverse();

For some reason, JavaScript is treating the first column as a string rather than an integer, returning the following output:

[4,"string"],[31,"string"],[3,"string"],[1,"string"],[0,"string"]

When the desired output should be:

[31,"string"],[4,"string"],[3,"string"],[1,"string"],[0,"string"]

What’s causing JS to do that?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    JavaScript is treating the whole element as a string, not just the first element.

    sort(), without any sort function specified, will call toString() on each element it looks at. Calling toString() on elements like yours, in all JavaScript engines I know, will give values like "[0,\"string\"]"

    You should specifiy your own sorter function to fix this:

    wordsAndCount.sort(function (a, b) {
    return b[0] - a[0];
});

    There’ll also be no need to use reverse() then.

    For more info, see the MDC documentation on sort().

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