Sorting names and IDs

[toefraz]

Hey, guys. I've been using a selection sort for sorting 1d arrays, but now i've got a 2d array with names and ids.

string employee[name][id]

and i can't figure out how to change the algorithm to sort just the names and have the ids still attached to them such as:

Smith, John 12
Q, Suzie 47
Ford, Henry 22

yields

Ford, Henry 22
Q, Suzie 47
Smith, John 12

any help would be much appreciated.

[Ganon11]

What are you sorting by; names, or IDs?

Basically, where you swap values, you'll have to swap the name values as well as the id values, which will involve re-writing your swap function.

[toefraz]

I'm sorting by names. I think I'll just use strcat to put the name and id into one string and just sort using a 1d algorithm then split them apart.

Or do you think another way would be easier/more efficient?

[Ganon11]

That will certainly work, but the suggestion I gave will also work, and will avoid any messy string work. What sorting function are you using? Whatever it is, when it swaps two values, you'll just rewrite that part to swap both the name and ID values. It's not hard - probably involving maybe 2 or 3 more lines of code at the most.

[weaknessforcats]

I'm sorting by names. I think I'll just use strcat to put the name and id into one string and just sort using a 1d algorithm then split them apart.

You sort variables. Your variables contain names plus an ID. That means your variables are struct variables. That means you have a 1D array of struct variables. That means you swap struct variables based on a comprare of the names inside the variables.

"Putting things together and later taking them apart" is a poor design approach.

Try to keep every thing in terms of a single variable. Then you can write functions to swap variables, to assign one to another, to copy, to assign, etc.