sort()
Sorts the collection in place.
Available because
Self
conforms toMutableCollection
.Available when
Self
conforms toRandomAccessCollection
andSelf.Element
conforms toComparable
mutating func sort()
Overview
You can sort any mutable collection of elements that conform to the Comparable
protocol by calling this method. Elements are sorted in ascending order.
Here’s an example of sorting a list of students’ names. Strings in Swift conform to the Comparable
protocol, so the names are sorted in ascending order according to the less-than operator (<
).
var students = ["Kofi", "Abena", "Peter", "Kweku", "Akosua"]
students.sort()
print(students)
// Prints "["Abena", "Akosua", "Kofi", "Kweku", "Peter"]"
To sort the elements of your collection in descending order, pass the greater-than operator (>
) to the sort(by:)
method.
students.sort(by: >)
print(students)
// Prints "["Peter", "Kweku", "Kofi", "Akosua", "Abena"]"
The sorting algorithm is not guaranteed to be stable. A stable sort preserves the relative order of elements that compare equal.