How to sort a string's characters alphabetically?

Question

For Array, there is a pretty sort method to rearrange the sequence of elements. I want to achieve the same results for a String.

For example, I have a string str = "String", I want to sort it alphabetically with one simple method to "ginrSt".

Is there a native way to enable this or should I include mixins from Enumerable?

Solution 1

The chars method returns an enumeration of the string's characters.

str.chars.sort.join
#=> "Sginrt"

To sort case insensitively:

str.chars.sort(&:casecmp).join
#=> "ginrSt"

Solution 2

Also (just for fun)

str = "String"
str.chars.sort_by(&:downcase).join
#=> "ginrSt"

Solution 3

You can transform the string into an array to sort:

'string'.split('').sort.join

Solution 4

str.unpack("c*").sort.pack("c*")

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