Sort list in C# with LINQ

Question

I want to sort a list in C#.

Like where structure property AVC goes to true then show them first then AVC goes to false. Are any way to do this in C# LINQ?

Answer 1

Well, the simplest way using LINQ would be something like this:

list = list.OrderBy(x => x.AVC ? 0 : 1)
           .ToList();

or

list = list.OrderByDescending(x => x.AVC)
           .ToList();

I believe that the natural ordering of bool values is false < true , but the first form makes it clearer IMO, because everyone knows that 0 < 1 .

Note that this won't sort the original list itself - it will create a new list, and assign the reference back to the list variable. If you want to sort in place, you should use the List<T>.Sort method.

Answer 2

Like this?

In LINQ:

var sortedList = originalList.OrderBy(foo => !foo.AVC)
                             .ToList();

Or in-place:

originalList.Sort((foo1, foo2) => foo2.AVC.CompareTo(foo1.AVC));

As Jon Skeet says, the trick here is knowing that false is considered to be 'smaller' than true.

If you find that you are doing these ordering operations in lots of different places in your code, you might want to get your type Foo to implement the IComparable<Foo> and IComparable interfaces.

Answer 3

I assume that you want them sorted by something else also, to get a consistent ordering between all items where AVC is the same. For example by name:

var sortedList = list.OrderBy(x => c.AVC).ThenBy(x => x.Name).ToList();