Finding a word's alphabetical position in a list

[aliinal]

Hi!

I'm writing an telehpone book program. And i use the format

nameandsurname;phonenumberone;phonenumbertwo;phonenumberthree

in the file. I seperate all the values while reading.
When i get the new entry, i want to write it to the alphabetical order place in the file. So when i read from file the list will be in alphabetical order.
How can i do it?
thank you

 

[Guest_imported]

Hello...

Well, here's an example using SWAP to put names in alphabetical order.

'------------------------
'Example of name sorting
'------------------------

NumberOfEntries = 4 'how many names to sort

DIM Names(NumberOfEntries) AS STRING 'Make room for them

'Now let's make up some names to use, not in order of course

Names(1) = "Nathan"
Names(2) = "Amy"
Names(3) = "Zimmy"
Names(4) = "Daniel"

'Let's see the order before sorting...

PRINT "=== Before Sorting ==="
FOR t% = 1 TO NumberOfEntries
PRINT Names(t%)
NEXT

'Now let's put them in alphabetical order...

FOR y% = 1 TO NumberOfEntries
FOR x% = y% TO NumberOfEntries
IF Names(y%) > Names(x%) THEN
SWAP Names(y%), Names(x%)
END IF
NEXT
NEXT

'Ok, that should have done it.
'Let's see the names in Alphabetical order

PRINT "=== After sorting ==="
FOR t% = 1 TO NumberOfEntries
PRINT Names(t%)
NEXT

'-----------------------------
'END EXAMPLE
'-----------------------------

Hope this helps.

- Dav

 

[aliinal]

Thanks Dav!

You've solved it!
You're not user so i can not vote for you!

But thank you very much!

 

[Guest_imported]

You're welcome.

Glad it helped you.

- Dav

 

[logiclrd]

There is also a FAQ on sort methods, which describes the quicksort (a very efficient sort method) quite well. If you're finding that 1,000 elements take a long time to sort with the above posted method (known as the 'bubble sort'), you may wish to look into the quicksort.

 

[Guest_imported]

Hmm...

I just read your FAQ's logiclrd. Nice job. Very helpful.

- Dav