For example, i have a string array ['item 2','item 1','item 10','item 4']. I want it to be like this ['item 1','item 2','item 4','item 10'] but by default, the sort() function sorts values by alphabetical order, which means it will look like this ['item 1','item 10','item 2','item 4']

For example, i have a string array ['item 2','item 1','item 10','item 4']. I want it to be like this ['item 1','item 2','item 4','item 10'] but by default, the sort() function sorts values by alphabetical order, which means it will look like this ['item 1','item 10','item 2','item 4']

• javascript
• arrays
• sorting

• With that particular input (and its variants, a constant string following by a number), array.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b, 'EN', {numeric: true})); will do the trick. – Teemu Commented Jun 4, 2021 at 10:18

6 Answers 6

Just get the number and sort it

let array = ["item 1", "item 10", "item 2", "item 4"];

const result = array.sort((a, b) => a.match(/\d+/) - b.match(/\d+/));
console.log(result);

You can add custom pare function in array.sort

const myArr = ['item 2','item 1','item 10','item 4'];
const sortArr = myArr.sort((a, b) => {
  const num1 = Number(a.split(' ')[1]);
  const num2 = Number(b.split(' ')[1]);
  return num1 - num2;
});
console.log(sortArr);

or simply

const myArr = ['item 2','item 1','item 10','item 4'];
const sortArr = myArr.sort((a, b) => Number(a.split(' ')[1]) - Number(b.split(' ')[1]))
console.log(sortArr);

You can pass a function to sort() method and sort it on custom way

let result = arr.sort((a,b) => a.split(' ')[1]-b.split(' ')[1])

console.log(result);

let array = ['item 1','item 10','item 2','item 4'];
var customSort = function (a, b) {
    return Number(a.replace("item ","")) - Number(b.replace("item ",""));  
}
console.log(array.sort(customSort));
//one line
console.log(array.sort((a,b) => Number(a.replace("item ","")) - Number(b.replace("item ",""))));

Make a custom sort() function and use slice to get the number of the string and then applyNumber() to transform it to a number for parison.

Note: sort() will update the original array.

const array = ["item 1", "item 10", "item 2", "item 4"];
array.sort((a, b) => Number(a.slice(5)) - Number(b.slice(5)));

console.log(array);

You can pick any answer. This is a more generic solution, for sorting strings ending with numeric values (or not).

const toNumberOrZero = str => {
  const maybeNumber = str.match(/(\d+)$/);
  return maybeNumber && +maybeNumber[0] || 0;
};
const sortNumericForStringsEndingWithNumbers = (a, b) =>
  toNumberOrZero(a) - toNumberOrZero(b);

console.log(
  ['item 2', 'item 1', 'item 10', 'item 4', 'item222', 
    'anything1023', 'notanumber', 'the meaning of life is 42']
  .sort(sortNumericForStringsEndingWithNumbers)
);