The sort()
method sorts the items of an array in a specific order (ascending or descending).
Example
var numbers = [1, 3, 8, 5, 2]
// sort the numbers array
numbers.sort()
print(numbers)
// Output: [1, 2, 3, 5, 8]
sort() Syntax
The syntax of the array sort()
method is:
array.sort(by: operator)
Here, array is an object of the Array
class.
sort() Parameters
The sort()
method can take one parameter:
- operator (optional) - If we pass greater-than operator
>
, the sorted array is reversed (or sorted in Descending order)
sort() Return Value
The sort()
method doesn't return any value. Rather, it changes the order of the original array.
Example 1: Swift Array sort()
// array of strings
var names = ["Adam", "Jeffrey", "Fabiano", "Danil", "Ben"]
// sort the names array
names.sort()
print(names)
// array of integers
var priceList = [1000, 50, 2, 7, 14]
// sort the priceList array
priceList.sort()
print(priceList)
Output
["Adam", "Ben", "Danil", "Fabiano", "Jeffrey"] [2, 7, 14, 50, 1000]
Here, we can see that the names array is sorted in ascending order of the string. For example, "Adam"
comes before "Danil"
because "A"
comes before "D"
.
Similarly, the priceList array is sorted in ascending order.
Example 2: Sorting in Descending Order
// array of strings
var names = ["Adam", "Jeffrey", "Fabiano", "Danil", "Ben"]
// sort the names array
names.sort(by: >)
print(names)
// array of integers
var priceList = [1000, 50, 2, 7, 14]
// sort the priceList array
priceList.sort(by: >)
print(priceList)
Output
["Jeffrey", "Fabiano", "Danil", "Ben", "Adam"] [1000, 50, 14, 7, 2]
Here, to sort the elements in descending order, we have passed the >
operator to the sort()
method
Note: We can also pass the <
operator to sort the elements in ascending order. However, if we do not pass any arguments, the sort()
method will arrange the elements in ascending order by default.