Sort alphabetically without using sort

Is it possible to sort alphabetically without using sort? If so, how can be do it?

[Stephen23]

@Cesc Sebas: is this homework? If this is not homework then the answer is "don't waste your time": the inbuilt sort is already faster and more robust than anything you could write. If this is homework, then go and look up sorting algorithms and implement one of them.

[the cyclist]

Here is a hint. The code

"cat" < "dog"

will return true.

[Cesc Sebas]

Well, @the cyclist the code "cat" < "dog" do not return true. It returns 1 1 0. Because it evaluate every letter.

[the cyclist]

Sorry, this is a MATLAB version difference.

'cat' < 'dog'

evaluates letter-by-letter, but

string('cat') < string('dog')

will compare the strings as I suggested, in R2016b.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

It is not possible to do alphabetic sorts using sort(). There is no human language for which sort() will return alphabetic order.

You can either program everything yourself, or you can use the POSIX standard environment variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE and write a little bit of C or C++ code to call strcoll()

Alphabetic sort is really quite messy to get right. Does uppercase sort before or after lowercase? Do letters with diacritics sort before or after the same letter without diacritics? What do you do about the fact that in some languages, ö is a distinct letter but in other languages it is a letter with a diacritic? What do you do about the fact that ß can be substituted with ss if necessary in print but which must be treated differently from ss for documents that predate the 1996 reform spelling rules? What do you do about hyphens?

Now, how do you sort names? Should "L. Sprague de Camp" be sorted with the L's, or with the D's, or with the C's? Do you sort Japanese names according to their Kanji or according to Kana or according to Katakana? What letter would you sort the name Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste Eno de la Salle under? To answer that properly you have to know which cultural background the person is from, since different cultures sort the same variety of long name differently!

You have a couple of years of work ahead of you to do this assignment properly.

[Steven Lord]

If you're trying to sort names, take a look at this webpage. [For some of the points on that page, consider this musician during a portion of 1993.]

[Walter Roberson]

Someone introduced me to that page last year, and I did a bit of poking around. The person who wrote that page was, if anything, an optimist :(