C# Sort Dictionary: Keys and Values

Sort the keys and values in a Dictionary with orderby and query expressions.

Sort Dictionary. Dictionary has no Sort method. If we need to loop through the Dictionary contents in sorted order, we must separately acquire the elements and sort them.Sort

Sorting approaches. We can sort a Dictionary with the Keys and Values properties and a List instance. Some approaches are slower than others.

An example. An example Dictionary is created. We apply the Keys property on the Dictionary instance. Then we use the ToList extension method and the Sort instance method.ToList

Next: The ToList and Sort methods are used on the Keys. The resulting List is looped through using the foreach-loop construct.

List Foreach

Var: The var implicit typed keyword is used throughout to reduce syntactic redundancy.

Var

C# program that sorts keys in Dictionary using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; class Program { static void Main() { // Create dictionary and add five keys and values. var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, int>(); dictionary.Add("car", 2); dictionary.Add("apple", 1); dictionary.Add("zebra", 0); dictionary.Add("mouse", 5); dictionary.Add("year", 3); // Acquire keys and sort them. var list = dictionary.Keys.ToList(); list.Sort(); // Loop through keys. foreach (var key in list) { Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", key, dictionary[key]); } } } Output apple: 1 car: 2 mouse: 5 year: 3 zebra: 0

Sort values. This program adds keys to a Dictionary and then sorts them by their values. Dictionary instances are not initially sorted. We use the orderby keyword in a query statement.orderby

Example: The dictionary has string keys, and int values. We will reorder the values to go from lowest to highest.

Query: It displays results, using foreach to iterate through and display each KeyValuePair. No additional lookups are required.

LINQ KeyValuePair

Note: Thanks to Jon Senchyna for improving the query expression. It is more efficient to use the collection of KeyValuePairs.

C# program that sorts Dictionary using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; class Program { static void Main() { // Example dictionary. var dictionary = new Dictionary<string, int>(5); dictionary.Add("cat", 1); dictionary.Add("dog", 0); dictionary.Add("mouse", 5); dictionary.Add("eel", 3); dictionary.Add("programmer", 2); // Order by values. // ... Use LINQ to specify sorting by value. var items = from pair in dictionary orderby pair.Value ascending select pair; // Display results. foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> pair in items) { Console.WriteLine("{0}: {1}", pair.Key, pair.Value); } // Reverse sort. // ... Can be looped over in the same way as above. items = from pair in dictionary orderby pair.Value descending select pair; } } Output dog: 0 cat: 1 programmer: 2 eel: 3 mouse: 5

OrderBy. Another option is the OrderBy extension method in System.Linq. This approach compiles to the same code as the orderby query expression.

Tip: Here the syntax is shorter. It requires only one lambda expression and method call.

Lambda

Exceptions: The program could (with certain changes) raise a KeyNotFoundException. We can trap those errors with exception handling.

Exception

Note: Thanks to Even Holen for writing in with an example of the shorter OrderBy syntax form.

C# program that uses OrderBy method using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; class Program { static void Main() { var items = new Dictionary<int, int>(); items.Add(-1, 0); items.Add(0, 1); items.Add(-2, 0); items.Add(3, 1); // Use OrderBy method. foreach (var item in items.OrderBy(i => i.Key)) { Console.WriteLine(item); } } } Output [-2, 0] [-1, 0] [0, 1] [3, 1]

Tip, opposite direction. It is possible and easy to sort in the opposite direction. Replace ascending with descending. When you omit the direction keyword, it will use ascending.Descending

Descending sort: var items = from pair in dictionary orderby pair.Value descending select pair; Output mouse: 5 eel: 3 programmer: 2 cat: 1 dog: 0

Notes, other methods. Other methods I found involve more steps, code or complexity. There is nothing wrong with those methods, although they vary in efficiency.

Sort string values. Sorting strings would work just as well. Sort() uses the interface implementations of the types. Its syntax is the same for any type that List.Sort() could sort.IComparable

A summary. Dictionary is optimized for fast lookups, not for specific looping mechanisms. It helps in lookup-heavy programs, but hinders programs that require sorted keys.Dictionary

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C# Sort Dictionary: Keys and Values

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