Overview
The .NET Framework’s SortedList class provides a hash table with automatically sorted key-value pairs. The available methods and properties for SortedList are very similar to the ones available in ArrayList.
The following sample code creates a SortedList and populates it with some key-value pairs:
Set SortedList = CreateObject("System.Collections.Sortedlist")
SortedList.Add "First", "Hello"
SortedList.Add "Second", ","
SortedList.Add "Third", "Rhino"
SortedList.Add "Fourth", "!"
For i = 0 To SortedList.Count - 1
Rhino.Print SortedList.GetKey(i) & vbTab & SortedList.GetByIndex(i)
Next
NOTE: SortedList only sorts the list by keys. It is not possible to sort the list by values.
Quick Sort
VBScript and RhinoScript do not expose procedures for sorting multiple arrays. The .NET framework does, but only a single Key-Value pair. The algorithm outlined on below can be easily extended to work for any number of value arrays. It is a standard implementation of the QuickSort algorithm.
QuickSort works through a Divide and Conquer approach and it’s one of the fastest sorting algorithms available. However, this implementation uses the recursive approach which may result in stack overflow errors on large datasets. QuickSort works best on randomized arrays, if the array is already almost sorted the solution will take more steps.
This implementation comes as a collection of three procedures, but it can be easily packaged into one.
First, the big one. This is the actual recursive algorithm:
Sub QuickSort(ByRef A(), ByRef B(), ByVal min, ByVal max)
Dim i : i = min
Dim k : k = max
If (max - min) >= 1 Then
Dim pivot : pivot = A(min)
While (k > i)
While (A(i) <= pivot And i <= max And k > i)
i = i+1
Wend
While (A(k) > pivot And k >= min And k >= i)
k = k-1
Wend
If (k > i) Then Call SwapElements(A, B, i, k)
Wend
Call SwapElements(A, B, min, k)
Call QuickSort(A, B, min, k-1)
Call QuickSort(A, B, k+1, max)
End If
End Sub
It depends on the SwapElement() subroutine, which could have been written inline, but since it is called twice, it is placed in a a separate subroutine:
Sub SwapElements(ByRef A(), ByRef B(), ByVal i0, ByVal i1)
Dim loc_A : loc_A = A(i0)
Dim loc_B : loc_B = B(i0)
A(i0) = A(i1)
B(i0) = B(i1)
A(i1) = loc_A
B(i1) = loc_B
End Sub
Finally, there’s a wrapper procedure that makes calling this function slightly easier:
Function SortByKey(ByRef Keys(), ByRef Values())
Call QuickSort(Keys, Values, 0, Ubound(Keys))
End Function
