Sort List by localization

Question

I need to sort a List which contains Japanese alphabet. How could I do this in C#?

Answer 1

I use:

Array.Sort(myArray, StringComparer.Ordinal);

It will sort the array by Ascii value, so you'll get hiragana, katakana, and then kanji.

Answer 2

There is an overload List<T>.Sort(IComparer<T> comparer). You can pass a culture specific comparer to the sort method. The following code compares using the Japanese culture settings:

myList.Sort(StringComparer.Create(new CultureInfo("ja-JP"), true));

In this case I passed true as the argument to indicate that the comparison must be case insensitive. The StringComparer has a couple of static properties and methods to create a suitable comparer:

StringComparer.CurrentCulture;
StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase;
StringComparer.Create(CultureInfo culture, bool ignoreCase);
etc.

You can find more information on this msdn page.