Question

sort() orders the elemts alphabetically:

var fruits = new Array("Apple", "Banana", "Kiwi", "Ananas", "Mango");
Namen.sort();
document.write(fruits);

Well, I don’t want the alphabetical order…it should be like

var reorderFruits = new Array("Kiwi", "Apple", "Mango", "Banana", "Ananas");

Is it possible to reorder the order the way I imagined it? How?

Thank you in advance.
Faili

Edit:

<input type="checkbox" id="apple" checked="checked" />
<label for="apple">Apple</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="Banana" checked="checked" />
<label for="Banana">Banana</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="Kiwi" />
<label for="Kiwi">Kiwi</label>
<input type="checkbox" id="Mango" checked="checked"/>
<label for="Mango">Mango</label>

Well… I get the information from a website I have no access to. No, I want to reorder the order.
In this example it is:

Apple -> Banana -> Kiwi -> Mango

Now I’m asking whether it is possible to make it to:

Kiwi -> Banana -> mango -> Apple

Please ask whether there is sth unclear.

Thank you so much.

Answer 1

This is just an example that will sort the array by the length of the item. It will match your desired output on any browser that uses a stable sorting algorithm (which is most of them now). You can modify the function to sort by any other criteria you want as well.

var fruits = new Array("Apple", "Banana","Kiwi",  "Ananas", "Mango");
fruits.sort(function(a,b) {
    return a.length - b.length;
});
document.write(fruits);

There are some rules with this. The sort function must compare a and b such that:

• It returns a numeric value indicated whether a is less than, equal to, or greater than b
• Multiple comparisons between the same a and b can happen, and should always return the same result for the same a and b.
• Equal values must always return 0.

I mention all this because one common (wrong) use for this is to randomize or shuffle an array such the sort function returns a random value. That will appear to work, but isn’t really random and can cause bugs later.