How to sort a dictionary with floats and integers together

[Doryisafish]

How would I go about sorting a table by its value similar to this?

local newTable = {
	["key"]= 0.1,
	["key2"] = 0,
	["key3"] = 0.5,
	["key4"] = 0.25,
	["key5"] = 1,
	["key6"] = 3.7,
	["key7"] = 2
	
}

[ModernWarSciFite (LittleBoy12)]

local valueTable = {}
for k, v in pairs(newTable)
  table.insert(valueTable, v)

table.sort(valuetable)

local i = 1
for k, v in pairs(newTable)
  keyTable[k] = valueTable[i]
  i += 1

Key Value pairs are not designed for sorting, they are designed for easy value retrieval. They are a hash map data structure.

If your table was instead an array, where the keys are indices. Then you can sort the table in place with a single call to table.sort() instead of all the above.

[Doryisafish]

ok, suppose the table above was an array with tables inside the array

local newTable = {
	{key, 0.1},
	{key2, 0.5},
	{key3, 3},
	{key4, 2.5},

	
}

Would i have the ability to sort this?

[12345koip]

That array of tables could be sorted with a sorter function.

table.sort(newTable, function(a: {any}, b: {any}): boolean
    return a[2] > b[2]
end

You could then retrieve the appropriate keys with a function like this:

local function getKeyFromNumber(number: number): string?
    for _, numHolder in next, newTable, nil do
        if numHolder[2] == number then
            return numHolder[1]
        end
    end

    return nil
end

[ModernWarSciFite (LittleBoy12)]

Yes.

table.sort(newTable, function (x, y)
     if x[2] <= y[2] then
          return true
     else return false end
)

The function parameter should return true if the X element should come before the Y element in the sorted table.

[Doryisafish]

thanks for the information on how this works guys