Sort months ( with strings ) algorithm

Question

I have this months array:

[\"January\", \"March\", \"December\" , \"October\" ]

And I want to have it sorted like this:

[\"         


        

Answer 1

Thanks all for the suggestions, I would like to mark you all as accepted.

Here's the resulting code:

// correct order 
months as String[] = ["jan", "feb", "mar", "apr", "may", "jun",
                      "jul", "aug", "sep", "oct", "nov", "dec"]
// my unsorted months 
myMonths as String[] = ["mar", "dec", "jul", "jan", "sep"]

// poor substitute for Map
mappedIndex as Int[]

// create an array with the corresponding index 
for each m in myMonths do
    i as Int = 0;
    for each month in months do 
       if m == month then 
           mappedIndex[] = i // no break, so I should use "else"
       else
          i = i + 1
       end
    end
end

// At this point mapped index has the same order as my "unsorted" array
// in this case [2,11,5,0,8]

// Fortunately this language has "sort" otherwise I would jump out of the window
mappedIndex.sort()

// create a new array to hold the sorted values
myMonthsSorted as String[]

// and fill it with the correct value
for each i in mappedIndex do 
   myMonthsSorted[] = months[i]
end