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c#genericssortingilist

Sorting an IList in C#

So I came across an interesting problem today. We have a WCF web service that returns an IList. Not really a big deal until I wanted to sort it.

Turns out the IList interface doesn't have a sort method built in.

I ended up using the ArrayList.Adapter(list).Sort(new MyComparer()) method to solve the problem but it just seemed a bit "ghetto" to me.

I toyed with writing an extension method, also with inheriting from IList and implementing my own Sort() method as well as casting to a List but none of these seemed overly elegant.

So my question is, does anyone have an elegant solution to sorting an IList

Solution

  • How about using LINQ To Objects to sort for you?

    Say you have a IList<Car>, and the car had an Engine property, I believe you could sort as follows:

    from c in list
orderby c.Engine
select c;

    Edit: You do need to be quick to get answers in here. As I presented a slightly different syntax to the other answers, I will leave my answer - however, the other answers presented are equally valid.