Question

I have a mulitdimensional array like so:

[
  [name, age, date, gender]
  [name, age, date, gender]
  [..]
]

I’m wondering the best way to sort this array based on multiple conditions…For instance, how would I sort based on age first then by name?

I was messing around with the sort method like so:

array.sort { |a,b| [ a[1], a[0] ] <=> [ b[1], b[0] ] }

Besides that I don’t really understand this syntax, I’m not getting the results I would expect. Should I be using the sort method? Should I be individually comparing results by mapping the array?

Answer 1

You should always use sort_by for a keyed sort. Not only is it much more readable, it is also much more efficient. In addition, I would also prefer to use destructuring bind, again, for readability:

array.sort_by {|name, age| [age, name] }