Numerically ordering a table of tables

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#1

I am attempting to order a set of tables in a table based on a value in those tables.

Example of what I mean:

local storagetable = {}
storagetable[1] = {}
storagetable[1]["points"] = 100

storagetable[2] = {}
storagetable[2]["points"] = 98

storagetable[3] = {}
storagetable[3]["points"] = 4

local newtable = {}

This is not the actual format of the tables but it is the closest visualization that I could come up with.

I am attempting to write a function that will go through the table and place each subtable in the newtable table from largest to smallest based on the subtable.points value.

This is what I came up with and it did not work in the slightest:

function orderresults (tabletoorder)
	local newtable = {}
	for i,v in pairs (tabletoorder) do
local num = 0
	if newtable[tonumber(v.points)] ~= nil then
print(tonumber(v.points))
		while newtable[tonumber(v.points)+num] ~= nil do
			wait() 
			num = num + 1
		print(tonumber(v.points)+num,newtable[tonumber(v.points)+num])
		end
	end
	newtable[tonumber(v.points)+num] = v
	end
return newtable
end
#2

It sounds like you can use table.sort for this. You can pass in a table and a function that does the sorting.

local storagetable = {}
storagetable[1] = {}
storagetable[1]["points"] = 100

storagetable[2] = {}
storagetable[2]["points"] = 98

storagetable[3] = {}
storagetable[3]["points"] = 4

table.sort(storagetable, function(a, b)
    return a.points > b.points -- answers the question "should a come before b?"
end)

If you don’t want storagetable sorted, but you do want a new table sorted, then you can copy the contents to a new table first and sort the new table:

local newtable = {unpack(storagetable)} -- this does a quick shallow copy for arrays
table.sort(newtable, function(a, b)
    return a.points > b.points
end)
#3

I tried this and it only sorted based off of the first number, so say the numbers were 11, 293, and 1, the sort order would end up being 11,1,293.

#4

That means that your numbers are strings, not numbers. That means that your table is actually:

local storagetable = {}
storagetable[1] = {}
storagetable[1]["points"] = "100"

storagetable[2] = {}
storagetable[2]["points"] = "98"

storagetable[3] = {}
storagetable[3]["points"] = "4"

This is something that you should fix. If for some reason you can’t or won’t fix it, here’s a workaround:

table.sort(storagetable, function(a, b)
    return tonumber(a.points) > tonumber(b.points) -- answers the question "should a come before b?"
end)
4 Likes
#5

That was it, thank you for the help!