sorting months and years in a c# list

Question

I have a list of strings where each string is a month and year

List<string> Dates = new List<string>
{
     "DEC16",
     "SEP16",
     "JUN16",
     "MAR15"
};

any way to order it like this

"MAR15",
"JUN16",
"SEP16",
"DEC16"

Answer 1

You can:

List<string> Dates = new List<string> {
    "DEC16",
    "SEP16",
    "JUN16",
    "MAR15"
};

Dates.Sort((p, q) => 
    DateTime.ParseExact(p, "MMMyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).CompareTo(
    DateTime.ParseExact(q, "MMMyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));

This because with the DateTime.ParseExact you can actually parse those dates (they will be converted to 1 December 2016 00:00 and so on)

Note that the months must be JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, DEC (upper or lowercase)

Answer 2

var sortedMonths = Dates
        .Select(x => new {
            Name = x,
            Sort = DateTime.ParseExact(x, "MMMyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)
        })
        .OrderBy(x => x.Sort)
        .Select(x => x.Name)
        .ToArray();