How do you sort a dictionary by value?

Question

I often have to sort a dictionary, consisting of keys & values, by value. For example, I have a hash of words and respective frequencies, that I want to order by frequen

Answer 1

Use:

using System.Linq.Enumerable;
...
List> myList = aDictionary.ToList();

myList.Sort(
    delegate(KeyValuePair pair1,
    KeyValuePair pair2)
    {
        return pair1.Value.CompareTo(pair2.Value);
    }
);

Since you're targeting .NET 2.0 or above, you can simplify this into lambda syntax -- it's equivalent, but shorter. If you're targeting .NET 2.0 you can only use this syntax if you're using the compiler from Visual Studio 2008 (or above).

var myList = aDictionary.ToList();

myList.Sort((pair1,pair2) => pair1.Value.CompareTo(pair2.Value));