ruby sortby 3rd element in a multidimential array npot working properly

Question

Hi,

I'm using ruby to sort an array where each element in the array is another array.

I have this:

Data = Data.SortBy { |Info| info[3] }

example data in this column:

3.1
2
5.65
-1
0.4
-9.43
-10.87
-2.3

It should sort this into:

5.65
3.1
2
0.4
-1
-2.3
-9.43
-10.87

But it comes out like this:

5.65
3.1
2
0.4
-1
-10.87
-2.3
-9.43

It's only comparing the first char of the float... not the whole number?

Answer 1

Looks like it's sorting alphabetically instead of numerically, that's why "1" comes before "10".

I assume the data in info are strings. If so, you can convert them to numerical floats for the sort operation:

data = data.sort_by{|info| info[3].to_f}