Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!brunix!vali!man
From: man@vali.cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hypercard
Subject: Re: Sorting by multiple fields
Message-ID: <48994@brunix.UUCP>
Date: 4 Sep 90 17:12:00 GMT
References: <1609@luth.sm.luth.se> <41691@sequent.UUCP> <1990Sep3.140709.16158@uncecs.edu>
Sender: news@brunix.UUCP
Reply-To: man@vali.cs.brown.edu (Mark H. Nodine)
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 26

In article <1990Sep3.140709.16158@uncecs.edu>, dlugose@uncecs.edu (Dan
Dlugose) writes:
|>In article <41691@sequent.UUCP> johnv@eng2.UUCP (John VanZandt) writes:
|>>I want to sort a stack by multiple fields, with a major and several minor
|>>sort fields.  How can this be done?
|>
|>The simplest sort method would be consecutive sort commands in the
|>reverse order of importance.  For example, if you had a stack of
|>student grades in the range A..F, class 1..5 , and you wanted the
|>main division to be grades, first all A's, within that sorted by
|>class 1..5, within that sorted by last name, this would work:
|>
|>sort by field "last name"
|>sort by field "class"
|>sort by field "grade"

It is also possible to do the sort in a single command:

  sort by field "last name" & numtochar(1) & field "class" &
numtochar(1) & field "grade"

where the numtochar(1) serves as delimiters.

	--Mark