How do you sort a dictionary by value?

Question

I often have to sort a dictionary, consisting of keys & values, by value. For example, I have a hash of words and respective frequencies, that I want to order by frequen

Answer 1

var ordered = dict.OrderBy(x => x.Value).ToDictionary(x => x.Key, x => x.Value);

Answer 2

Sorting a SortedDictionary list to bind into a ListView control using VB.NET:

Dim MyDictionary As SortedDictionary(Of String, MyDictionaryEntry)

MyDictionaryListView.ItemsSource = MyDictionary.Values.OrderByDescending(Function(entry) entry.MyValue)

Public Class MyDictionaryEntry ' Need Property for GridViewColumn DisplayMemberBinding
    Public Property MyString As String
    Public Property MyValue As Integer
End Class

XAML:

<ListView Name="MyDictionaryListView">
    <ListView.View>
        <GridView>
            <GridViewColumn DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=MyString}" Header="MyStringColumnName"></GridViewColumn>
            <GridViewColumn DisplayMemberBinding="{Binding Path=MyValue}" Header="MyValueColumnName"></GridViewColumn>
         </GridView>
    </ListView.View>
</ListView>

Answer 3

Use:

using System.Linq.Enumerable;
...
List<KeyValuePair<string, string>> myList = aDictionary.ToList();

myList.Sort(
    delegate(KeyValuePair<string, string> pair1,
    KeyValuePair<string, string> pair2)
    {
        return pair1.Value.CompareTo(pair2.Value);
    }
);

Since you're targeting .NET 2.0 or above, you can simplify this into lambda syntax -- it's equivalent, but shorter. If you're targeting .NET 2.0 you can only use this syntax if you're using the compiler from Visual Studio 2008 (or above).

var myList = aDictionary.ToList();

myList.Sort((pair1,pair2) => pair1.Value.CompareTo(pair2.Value));

Answer 4

Use LINQ:

Dictionary<string, int> myDict = new Dictionary<string, int>();
myDict.Add("one", 1);
myDict.Add("four", 4);
myDict.Add("two", 2);
myDict.Add("three", 3);

var sortedDict = from entry in myDict orderby entry.Value ascending select entry;

This would also allow for great flexibility in that you can select the top 10, 20 10%, etc. Or if you are using your word frequency index for type-ahead, you could also include StartsWith clause as well.

Answer 5

You can sort a Dictionary by value and save it back to itself (so that when you foreach over it the values come out in order):

dict = dict.OrderBy(x => x.Value).ToDictionary(x => x.Key, x => x.Value);

Sure, it may not be correct, but it works.

Answer 6

Suppose we have a dictionary as

   Dictionary<int, int> dict = new Dictionary<int, int>();
   dict.Add(21,1041);
   dict.Add(213, 1021);
   dict.Add(45, 1081);
   dict.Add(54, 1091);
   dict.Add(3425, 1061);
   sict.Add(768, 1011);

1) you can use temporary dictionary to store values as :

        Dictionary<int, int> dctTemp = new Dictionary<int, int>();

        foreach (KeyValuePair<int, int> pair in dict.OrderBy(key => key.Value))
        {
            dctTemp .Add(pair.Key, pair.Value);
        }