LabVIEW
Sorting 1D Array Discussion - How to Sort the following? Fun "Puzzle"
Hello LabVIEW community. We all love puzzles, yes? Well here's one for you as I was working on a sorting function cuz this one required me to do some serious thinking because of all the different scenarios that could take place. So I'd be curious how everyone else would do this. I'm always impressed by some of the much simpler ways some of y'all come up with. I'll post a picture of the issue and the VI (in LV2015). The goal is to get the data on the left sorted to look like the data on the right. Good Luck. 
(not terribly hard, but still fun I thought)
Assuming the first number is less than 10000 you can do something like that:
-multiply the first number by 1000 and add the second one
-sort this 1D array
-recreate the string array
You can use a bigger scale factor if necessary. Of course it is not universal and would have like to find a 1 or no loop solution but this seems to be an easy way to do this.
Ben64
@OEM_Dev wrote:
http://www.ni.com/example/25012/en/
I'd use this, because I'm lazy and don't like re-inventing the wheel
Well... huh. I mean, I don't mind a challenge and proving to myself that I can do it. But yeah... that would have been nice to know that existed originally. It's definitely more complicated than what I did, but it also achieves every possible (least what I can think of) scenario. My solution is for my specific case and probably shouldn't be used for any and every string. Oh well... still fun... right? 
What is fun for me is remebering I read about an elegant solution when reading others post on this forum.
Ben
*Edit: I posted before I had read any replies to the post, I see now that I am only repeating Ben's solution...*
Fun exercise! It took a while for me to figure out an "acceptable" solution. I ended up doing this:
(assuming only standard functions is to be used, of course)
@ben64 wrote:
Assuming the first number is less than 10000 you can do something like that:
-multiply the first number by 1000 and add the second one
-sort this 1D array
-recreate the string array
You can use a bigger scale factor if necessary. Of course it is not universal and would have like to find a 1 or no loop solution but this seems to be an easy way to do this.
Ben64
I did similar. But I was thinking that because I don't know what the maximum number is nor do I know what the tolearances are going to be I risk a "duplicate" that won't be sorted correctly.
@perhult wrote:
Fun exercise! It took a while for me to figure out an "acceptable" solution. I ended up doing this:
(assuming only standard functions is to be used, of course)
Oh, very nice! Kudos awarded. Also... I think this is what Ben was talking about.
Edit: I saw your edit. And yep. But it's cool. I know it was original.
@DailyDose wrote:
@OEM_Dev wrote:
http://www.ni.com/example/25012/en/
I'd use this, because I'm lazy and don't like re-inventing the wheel
Well... huh. I mean, I don't mind a challenge and proving to myself that I can do it. But yeah... that would have been nice to know that existed originally. It's definitely more complicated than what I did, but it also achieves every possible (least what I can think of) scenario. My solution is for my specific case and probably shouldn't be used for any and every string. Oh well... still fun... right?
I had to do a similar sort in a project I did recently which I why I knew this existed off the top of my head 
definitely saved me a lot of time. I try to search the forums before starting something complicated because this isn't the first time I've found a solution thats a lot more elegant than mine on here.
