Question

I have a class like one in which student sit.
i have location like B6 B7 B8 B9 B10 B11
I get it in this order if i use FindAll with in some class(one oops version)
everything goes fine untill i do

    someclass.OrderBy(r => r.location);

and after that location becomes B10 B11 B6 B7 B8 B9
what is going wrong here. I am better without using orderBY then but can any one tell me reason for problem I am having ?

Answer 1

You could implement your own custom comparer …

class CustomCompare : IComparer<string>
{
    private static readonly char[] _digits = "0123456789".ToArray();

    public int Compare(string a, string b)
    {
        //assuming alpha start, numeric end
        var alphaA = a.TrimEnd(_digits);
        var alphaB = b.TrimEnd(_digits);
        var alphaCompareTo = alphaA.CompareTo(alphaB);

        if (alphaCompareTo != 0)
        {
            return alphaCompareTo;
        }

        var numericA = int.Parse(a.Substring(alphaA.Length));
        var numericB = int.Parse(b.Substring(alphaB.Length));

        return numericA.CompareTo(numericB);
    }
}

… and use it like so …

someclass.OrderBy(r => r.location, new CustomCompare());