Editing WoW:API sort

{{luaapi}}
From [http://lua-users.org/wiki/TableLibraryTutorial TableLibraryTutorial] of lua-users.org.

 table.sort(table [, compFunc])
 sort(table[, compFunc])

Sort the elements of a table in-place (i.e. alter the table).

 > t = { 3,2,5,1,4 }
 > table.sort(t)
 > = table.concat(t, ", ")  -- display sorted values
 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

If the table has a specified size only the range specified is sorted, e.g.,

 > t = { 3,2,5,1,4; n=3 }   -- construct a table with user size of 3
 > table.sort(t)            -- sort will be limited by user size
 > = table.concat(t, ", ")  -- only specified size is concatenated as well
 2, 3, 5

;''Warning:'' Setting the range of the sort is no longer possible since table.setn is no longer supported (setting n=3 will not set the size of the table to 3) [[User:Yssaril|Yssaril]] 05:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

A comparison function can be provided to customise the element sorting. The comparison function must return a boolean value specifying whether the first argument should be before the second argument in the sequence. The default behaviour is for the < comparison to be made. For example, the following behaves the same as no function being supplied:

 > t = { 3,2,5,1,4 }
 > table.sort(t, function(a,b) return a&lt;b end)
 > = table.concat(t, ", ")
 1, 2, 3, 4, 5        

We can see if we reverse the comparison the sequence order is reversed.

 > table.sort(t, function(a,b) return a&gt;b end)
 > = table.concat(t, ", ")
 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

----
;''Notes:''
: Sorting tables containing non-numeric keys using a custom comparison function does not work. The function will not get called, and the table will be sorted according to some kind of internal function.

==Sorting by Name==
There is a user-function you can write that will sort a table by name during a for function.

 function pairsByKeys (t, f)
     local a = {}
     for n in pairs(t) do table.insert(a, n) end
     table.sort(a, f)
     local i = 0      -- iterator variable
     local iter = function ()   -- iterator function
         i = i + 1
         if a[i] == nil then return nil
         else return a[i], t[a[i]]
         end
      end
      return iter
 end

This function will replace the pairs function in a for statement. Example:

 for title,value in pairsByKeys(randomtable) do
     DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(title..", "..value);
 end

This will print all the variables in randomtable alphabetically!