Question

I have a List<Unit> where Unit contains Name and Value. In this object I store information about apparel sizes Name contains size names (S,M,L,XL..) and Value contains the quantity of that size.

This unit list is contained from a database, but the list comes in random order, so in the liste it might be like this:

Unit(M,3)
Unit(S,1)
Unit(XXL,2)
Unit(L,2)

I would like to sort the list so that it become more like this:

Unit(S,1)
Unit(M,3)
Unit(L,2)
Unit(XXLL,2)

I cant order on the string ASCE or DESC since it M comes before S and so on.
Then I thought I might create an reference Array with the correct order (XXS,XS,S,M,L,XL,XXL,XXXL), but how can I sort my list according to the reference.

Or are there other clever ways of doing this?

Update

Thanks for all good answers, I landed on the Enum solution, and it finally looks like this:

public class Unit
{
    public Unit()
    {
    }

    public Unit(string name, int value)
    {
        Value = value;
        SizeCode = AssignSizeCode(name);
    }

    public SizeCode SizeCode { get; set; }
    public int Value { get; set; }

    private SizeCode AssignSizeCode(string name)
    {
        switch (name)
        {
            case "XXS":
                return SizeCode.XXS;
            case "XS":
                return SizeCode.XS;
            case "S":
                return SizeCode.S;
            case "M":
                return SizeCode.M;
            case "L":
                return SizeCode.L;
            case "XL":
                return SizeCode.XL;
            case "XXL":
                return SizeCode.XXL;
            case "XXXL":
                return SizeCode.XXXL;
            default:
                return SizeCode.Unknown;
        }
    }

}

public enum SizeCode
{
    XXS = 1,
    XS = 2,
    S = 3,
    M = 4,
    L = 5,
    XL = 6,
    XXL = 7,
    XXXL = 8,
    Unknown = 9
}

And I sort it like this:

units = units.OrderBy(x => (int)x.SizeCode).ToList();

Any comments, or things I can improve?

Answer 1

How about using a enum

public enum Size
    {
        Small = 1,
        Medium = 2,
        // etc 

    }

Then you can convert the enum value in Unit class to int and sort by the integer value.