JS Counting Sort with Delimiter

Question

I have a sample of my data with the following array that's currently in the order the result should look like; how would I implement a counting sort to keep this data organized in this form:

1. Organized by the first 4 digits in ascending order.

2. Organized by the last 4 digits after the "-" delimiter in a ascending order.

3. Check for digits after the ":" delimiter and organize in ascending order

   array = [5080-2002,5080-2002:01,5080-2002:02,5080-2102,5080-2102:01,5080-2103,5080-2103:01,5460-1601,5460-1601:01,5460-1601:02]

This is way beyond my current level of experience, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!!

Answer 1

Three assumptions here:

• - is always a part of an element
• : is optional (and element having this should always follow the one with that part empty)
• the number of digits in each part is not fixed (otherwise it'll be just a case for sort(), as in @NinaScholz answer)

For those, here's one possible way:

const arr = [
  '111-111:111',
  '111-111',
  '111-111:22',
  '111-22',
  '111-22:111',
  '111-22:22',
  '22-111:111',
  '22-111:22',
  '22-111',
  '22-22',
  '22-22:111',
  '22-22:22',
]

arr.sort((a, b) => {
  const [a0, a1, a2 = -Infinity] = a.split(/[-:]/);
  const [b0, b1, b2 = -Infinity] = b.split(/[-:]/);
  return a0 - b0 || a1 - b1 || a2 - b2;
})

console.log(arr);