How to Sort a List<> by a Integer stored in the struct my List<> holds

Question

I need to sort a highscore file for my game I've written.

Each highscore has a Name, Score and Date variable. I store each one in a List.

Here is the struct that holds each highscores data.

struct Highscore
{
    public string Name;
    public int Score;
    public string Date;

    public string DataAsString()
    {
        return Name + "," + Score.ToString() + "," + Date;
    }
}

So how would I sort a List of type Highscores by the score variable of each object in the list?

Any help is appreciated :D

Solution 1

I don't know why everyone is proposing LINQ based solutions that would require additional memory (especially since Highscore is a value type) and a call to ToList() if one wants to reuse the result. The simplest solution is to use the built in Sort method of a List

list.Sort((s1, s2) => s1.Score.CompareTo(s2.Score));

This will sort the list in place.

Solution 2

var sortedList = yourList.OrderBy(x => x.Score);

or use OrderByDescending to sort in opposite way

Solution 3

Use LINQ:

myScores.OrderBy(s => s.Score);

Here is a great resource to learn about the different LINQ operators.

Comments

[Jeff Mercado]

The result of calling OrderBy() is not a list however.

[Xonatron]

This works, but can you break down what is happening to make it work?

[Stilgar]

The method Sort takes a delegate argument for comparing two elements from the array which it uses to perform sorting. The lambda passed as an argument uses the default CompareTo method of the Score property. By convention comparing returns -1, 0, 1 depending on how elements relate to each other.