Sorting Property Lists by Value

Date:    Thu, 2 Mar 1995 18:05:34 -0800
From:    David Miller <davem@PANGEA.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Lingo: sorting property lists by value
 
> Is there a way to sort property lists with their values as the criteria?

This handler will sort a property list from largest to smallest value. Some points:

It doesn't work on property lists that have been already sorted (by property) using Lingo's sort command.
It writes over the original list, so pass in a copy if you want to preserve the original order.
It is also a recursive routine, so may cause memory problems with large lists.

on SortPropListDec myList  --doesn't work with sorted list; writes over myList
  if count(myList) then
    set myMinVal = min(myList)
    set myPos = getPos(myList,myMinVal)
    set myProp = getPropAt(myList, myPos)
    deleteAt(myList, myPos)
    SortPropListDec(myList)
    addProp myList, myProp, myMinVal
  end if
end

Date:    Sat, 4 Mar 1995 09:43:41 +0000
From:    Peter Small <peter@GENPS.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: Re: Lingo: sorting property lists by value

Here's a little function that may do the trick for you.

Call it with:

SortApropListByValue(yourPropList)
 
on SortApropListByValue propL      --function
  set linList to []
  set sortedProp to [:]
  repeat with i in propL
    append linList,i
  end repeat
  sort linList
  put count(propL) into EntNum
  repeat with p in linList
    repeat with q = 1 to entNum
      if p = getAt(propL,q) then
        addProp sortedProp,getpropAt(propL,q),getAt(propL,q)
        setAt propL,q,maxInteger()
      end if
    end repeat
  end repeat
 return sortedProp --RETURNS YOUR LIST SORTED BY VALUE
end