sorting

Unity Engine
1

I have been trying to come up with a way to sort an array while still maintaining a link with it’s counterpart.

I’m pulling in a tab delineated file from my database and populating several arrays (title, genre, artist, etc), the problem comes when I want to sort these arrays.

How do I sort the genre array while still maintaining a link to the title array?

I have looked into hashtables, but I run into a duplicate key issue because the genre is a short list and several titles will have the same name.

This is the problem Raoul had here : http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9965&view=previous&sid=9a61dc25b8e716427d8fe10e3b513cfd

I can iterate through the list and compare them to a predefined list (like genre) using a for loop and a switch statement - but that won’t work for artist category where I don’t have the list of artists up front.

thanks

Flash

2

not 100% sure what exactly you want to do, recreate a relational DB sort of thing? Have you looked into using SQLite within Unity?

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=8432

Or will ArrayList.Sort() do what you want?

Cheers.

3

So, you want to take something like this:

[0, Pear, fruit]
[1, Apple, fruit]
[2, Steak, meat]
[3, Beer, drink]

and be able to sort the whole thing one of the items, so if we chose the second column:

[1, Apple, fruit]
[3, Beer, drink]
[0, Pear, fruit]
[2, Steak, meat]

???

4

Maybe you could use the C# build in SortedList class and just write your own Comparer to be used when the SortedList is instantiated.

5

Charles - that is exactly what I’m trying to do.

I am building a web player so if it’s not in the default player, I don’t want to import it. (trying to keep my overhead as low as possible)

how would I do what you have described? sorting the second row?

EDIT:
I googled SortedList and found this post that looks like it may help http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=26444&highlight=&sid=b372630a514f89c16f141cf891971a42

Freyr is talking about using Icomparable and compareTo, to sort the list.

right now the arrays that I have built are separate, so I think my first step is going to be to create an array like Charles has in the simple example above

[title, genre, artist, etc]

then write a script like Freyr has that sorts the second column while dragging all of the rest of the components with it.

any other suggestions?

Thanks

Flash

6

I’ve not done this in Unity, and I’m a .NET noob, but .NET can sort one array based on the values of another array of equal length. The key value in the key array at a given index is used to look up the value in the value array at the same index. You might want to Google something like “.NET key-value sorting”. :?

I would think that this could also be a job for IComparable.

7

Well I’m not all that happy with this code, but it does work (more or less)

Here’s what I was able to come up with, maybe somebody out there will be able to use this or improve upon it.

This is an adaption from Raoul’s post here:
http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=9965&view=previous&sid=9a61dc25b8e716427d8fe10e3b513cfd

function sortHashtable (inpHash : Hashtable) : Array {
	var q : int; //this is used to ensure no duplicate keys are made 
	var arrayValues = new Array(); //intermediate array used to sort the data
	var valuesKeysHash = new Hashtable(); //new hashTable for the new order of values
	var returnArray = new Array(); //what gets returned
	// create arrays of values and reverse keys and values in valuesKeysHash hashtable
	for (key in inpHash.Keys) {
		var checkDuplicate : boolean = noDuplicates(arrayValues,inpHash,key); //this will check for duplicate keys
		if (checkDuplicate == false)
			arrayValues[arrayValues.length] = inpHash[key]; //no duplicate
		else {
			arrayValues[arrayValues.length] = inpHash[key] + q; //if duplicate - then add q to the end to make it unique ***can you say hack job?***
			q++;
		}
		valuesKeysHash.Add(arrayValues[arrayValues.length-1], key); //create a new hash with the values as keys and keys as values
	}
	arrayValues.Sort();// sort the array with values
	for (iVal in arrayValues)   // create new array holding the new order of keys and return it
		returnArray[returnArray.length] = valuesKeysHash[iVal]; //populate returnArray with the keys in desired order
	return returnArray; //return this value
} 

//This function checks for duplicate, returns true if it is
function noDuplicates(arrayValues : Array, inpHash : Hashtable, key : String) : boolean {
	for (k = 0 ; k < arrayValues.length ; k++ ) {
		if (arrayValues[k] == inpHash[key])
			return true;
	}
	return false;
}

I’ve solved his duplicate key entry by adding a number to the end of the String. I need to add one more function that takes the subcategories and alphabetizes them, so that when there is a duplicate key, I get that section of the list in a-z order vice some random one that I have now.

Hope this helps someone out - and if you can improve upon this code please feel free

Flash