Implementing custom IComparer with string

Question

I have a collection of strings in c#, for example;

var example = new string[]{\"c\", \"b\", \"a\", \"d\"};

I then with to sort this, but my

Answer 1

A simple way is to substitute integers for the strings.

class MyComparer : IComparer
{
    public override int Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        int ix = x == "b" ? 0 : x == "c" ? 1 : 2;
        int iy = y == "b" ? 0 : y == "c" ? 1 : 2;
        return ix.CompareTo(iy);
    }
}

var example = new List { "c", "b", "a", "d", "foo", "", "1", "e"};
example.Sort(new MyComparer());
foreach (var s in example)
    Console.WriteLine(s);

Output:

b
c

1
e
a
d
foo

Note that this isn't a stable sort. If you need a stable sort, there's a little more work involved.