example-built-in-sort

Sort Numbers: use a built-in array method

Takes in an array of numbers and returns a new array with the same numbers sorted from smallest to largest.

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Strategy

I chose to used built-in array methods to solve this challenge because they're fun to use and nice to read.

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Implementation

There were a few tricky things I had to figure out:

• the .sort method modifies the array that is being sorted. To avoid side-effects I needed to create a copy and sort the copy. (MDN - in place)
• using .sort without a callback actually sorts alphabetically - helpful for strings but not for numbers. I needed to write a callback that finds the difference between two numbers, it took me a while to understand this. (raddevon)

I write my callback directly inside .sort( ... ) with an arrow function and implicit return. I like this because it's more readable.

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Use Cases

You could use this array to sort items in a shopping application from least to most expensive:

const allProducts = [
  { name: 'teddy bear', price: 3 },
  { name: 'milk', price: 1 },
  { name: 'light bulb', price: 2 },
];
const prices = allProducts.map((product) => product.price);
const sortedPrices = sortNumbers(prices);
const priceStrings = sortedPrices.map((price) => `${price}.0 €`);
console.log(priceStrings); // ['1.0 €', '2.0 €', '3.0 €']

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Inspiration

This article from raddevon.com gave me the starter code for my solution - especially the callback for .sort. But I needed to adapt that code to avoid side-effects and to make a complete function.