Question

I have a situation where I need to sort arrays and preserve the current key – value pairs.

For example, this array:

(0) = 4
(1) = 3
(2) = 1
(3) = 2

Needs to sort like this

(2) = 1
(3) = 2
(1) = 3
(0) = 4

Retaining the original keys. Array.Sort(myArray) sorts into the right sequence but doesn’t keep the indexes. I need a variant that does.

edit
Using the links, this seems close to what I want. Do I just need to remove the extra brackets to convert this to vb.net?

myList.Sort((firstPair,nextPair) =>
    {
        return firstPair.Value.CompareTo(nextPair.Value);
    }
);

(also would I intergrate this as a function or something else?)

Answer 1

Since you are using .net 2.0 (since you said that you are using Visual Studio 2005 in one of the comments), using an OrderedDictionary might be an option for you, if every array value appears only once. Since OrderedDictionaries are ordered by the key, you could add your array entries to such a dictionary, using

• the array index as the dictionary value and
• the array value as the dictionary key (which will be used to order the dictionary).