How to sort an array in descending order in Ruby

309
votes

I have an array of hashes:

[
  { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 2 },
  { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 3 },
  { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 5 },
]

I am trying to sort this array in descending order according to the value of :bar in each hash.

I am using sort_by to sort above array:

a.sort_by { |h| h[:bar] }

However, this sorts the array in ascending order. How do I make it sort in descending order?

One solution was to do following:

a.sort_by { |h| -h[:bar] }

But that negative sign does not seem appropriate.

8
rubysorting
Given the other options I still think -h[:bar] is the most elegant. What do you not like about it? – Michael Kohl
I was much more interested on conveying the intent of code. – Waseem
@Waseem There's nothing wrong with the current answer. There's just happens to be a far better answer. the Tin Man's answer is much more thorough and shows that sort_by.reverse is dramatically more efficient than the currently accepted answer. I believe it also better addresses the concern you mentioned above for "conveying the intent of code". On top of that, the Tin Man has updated his answer for the current version of ruby. This question has been viewed over 15k times. If you can save even 1 second of each viewer's time, I think it's worth it. – colllin
@collindo Thanks I did it. :) – Waseem
Here it is 2016 and we have another way (since v2.2): arr.max_by(arr.size) { |h| h[:bar] } #=> [{:foo=>"foo", :bar=>5}, {:foo=>"foo", :bar=>3}, {:foo=>"foo", :bar=>2}]. – Cary Swoveland

8 Answers

609
votes

It's always enlightening to do a benchmark on the various suggested answers. Here's what I found out:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'benchmark'

ary = []
1000.times { 
  ary << {:bar => rand(1000)} 
}

n = 500
Benchmark.bm(20) do |x|
  x.report("sort")               { n.times { ary.sort{ |a,b| b[:bar] <=> a[:bar] } } }
  x.report("sort reverse")       { n.times { ary.sort{ |a,b| a[:bar] <=> b[:bar] }.reverse } }
  x.report("sort_by -a[:bar]")   { n.times { ary.sort_by{ |a| -a[:bar] } } }
  x.report("sort_by a[:bar]*-1") { n.times { ary.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar]*-1 } } }
  x.report("sort_by.reverse!")   { n.times { ary.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar] }.reverse } }
end

                          user     system      total        real
sort                  3.960000   0.010000   3.970000 (  3.990886)
sort reverse          4.040000   0.000000   4.040000 (  4.038849)
sort_by -a[:bar]      0.690000   0.000000   0.690000 (  0.692080)
sort_by a[:bar]*-1    0.700000   0.000000   0.700000 (  0.699735)
sort_by.reverse!      0.650000   0.000000   0.650000 (  0.654447)

I think it's interesting that @Pablo's sort_by{...}.reverse! is fastest. Before running the test I thought it would be slower than "-a[:bar]" but negating the value turns out to take longer than it does to reverse the entire array in one pass. It's not much of a difference, but every little speed-up helps.

Please note that these results are different in Ruby 1.9

Here are results for Ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20 revision 35410) [x86_64-darwin10.8.0]:

                           user     system      total        real
sort                   1.340000   0.010000   1.350000 (  1.346331)
sort reverse           1.300000   0.000000   1.300000 (  1.310446)
sort_by -a[:bar]       0.430000   0.000000   0.430000 (  0.429606)
sort_by a[:bar]*-1     0.420000   0.000000   0.420000 (  0.414383)
sort_by.reverse!       0.400000   0.000000   0.400000 (  0.401275)

These are on an old MacBook Pro. Newer, or faster machines, will have lower values, but the relative differences will remain.

Here's a bit updated version on newer hardware and the 2.1.1 version of Ruby:

#!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'benchmark'

puts "Running Ruby #{RUBY_VERSION}"

ary = []
1000.times {
  ary << {:bar => rand(1000)}
}

n = 500

puts "n=#{n}"
Benchmark.bm(20) do |x|
  x.report("sort")               { n.times { ary.dup.sort{ |a,b| b[:bar] <=> a[:bar] } } }
  x.report("sort reverse")       { n.times { ary.dup.sort{ |a,b| a[:bar] <=> b[:bar] }.reverse } }
  x.report("sort_by -a[:bar]")   { n.times { ary.dup.sort_by{ |a| -a[:bar] } } }
  x.report("sort_by a[:bar]*-1") { n.times { ary.dup.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar]*-1 } } }
  x.report("sort_by.reverse")    { n.times { ary.dup.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar] }.reverse } }
  x.report("sort_by.reverse!")   { n.times { ary.dup.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar] }.reverse! } }
end

# >> Running Ruby 2.1.1
# >> n=500
# >>                            user     system      total        real
# >> sort                   0.670000   0.000000   0.670000 (  0.667754)
# >> sort reverse           0.650000   0.000000   0.650000 (  0.655582)
# >> sort_by -a[:bar]       0.260000   0.010000   0.270000 (  0.255919)
# >> sort_by a[:bar]*-1     0.250000   0.000000   0.250000 (  0.258924)
# >> sort_by.reverse        0.250000   0.000000   0.250000 (  0.245179)
# >> sort_by.reverse!       0.240000   0.000000   0.240000 (  0.242340)

New results running the above code using Ruby 2.2.1 on a more recent Macbook Pro. Again, the exact numbers aren't important, it's their relationships:

Running Ruby 2.2.1
n=500
                           user     system      total        real
sort                   0.650000   0.000000   0.650000 (  0.653191)
sort reverse           0.650000   0.000000   0.650000 (  0.648761)
sort_by -a[:bar]       0.240000   0.010000   0.250000 (  0.245193)
sort_by a[:bar]*-1     0.240000   0.000000   0.240000 (  0.240541)
sort_by.reverse        0.230000   0.000000   0.230000 (  0.228571)
sort_by.reverse!       0.230000   0.000000   0.230000 (  0.230040)

Updated for Ruby 2.7.1 on a Mid-2015 MacBook Pro:

Running Ruby 2.7.1
n=500     
                           user     system      total        real
sort                   0.494707   0.003662   0.498369 (  0.501064)
sort reverse           0.480181   0.005186   0.485367 (  0.487972)
sort_by -a[:bar]       0.121521   0.003781   0.125302 (  0.126557)
sort_by a[:bar]*-1     0.115097   0.003931   0.119028 (  0.122991)
sort_by.reverse        0.110459   0.003414   0.113873 (  0.114443)
sort_by.reverse!       0.108997   0.001631   0.110628 (  0.111532)

...the reverse method doesn't actually return a reversed array - it returns an enumerator that just starts at the end and works backwards.

The source for Array#reverse is:

               static VALUE
rb_ary_reverse_m(VALUE ary)
{
    long len = RARRAY_LEN(ary);
    VALUE dup = rb_ary_new2(len);

    if (len > 0) {
        const VALUE *p1 = RARRAY_CONST_PTR_TRANSIENT(ary);
        VALUE *p2 = (VALUE *)RARRAY_CONST_PTR_TRANSIENT(dup) + len - 1;
        do *p2-- = *p1++; while (--len > 0);
    }
    ARY_SET_LEN(dup, RARRAY_LEN(ary));
    return dup;
}

do *p2-- = *p1++; while (--len > 0); is copying the pointers to the elements in reverse order if I remember my C correctly, so the array is reversed.

93
votes

Just a quick thing, that denotes the intent of descending order.

descending = -1
a.sort_by { |h| h[:bar] * descending }

(Will think of a better way in the mean time) ;)

a.sort_by { |h| h[:bar] }.reverse!
59
votes

You could do:

a.sort{|a,b| b[:bar] <=> a[:bar]}
10
votes

I see that we have (beside others) basically two options:

a.sort_by { |h| -h[:bar] }

and

a.sort_by { |h| h[:bar] }.reverse

While both ways give you the same result when your sorting key is unique, keep in mind that the reverse way will reverse the order of keys that are equal.

Example:

a = [{foo: 1, bar: 1},{foo: 2,bar: 1}]
a.sort_by {|h| -h[:bar]}
 => [{:foo=>1, :bar=>1}, {:foo=>2, :bar=>1}]
a.sort_by {|h| h[:bar]}.reverse
 => [{:foo=>2, :bar=>1}, {:foo=>1, :bar=>1}]

While you often don't need to care about this, sometimes you do. To avoid such behavior you could introduce a second sorting key (that for sure needs to be unique at least for all items that have the same sorting key):

a.sort_by {|h| [-h[:bar],-h[:foo]]}
 => [{:foo=>2, :bar=>1}, {:foo=>1, :bar=>1}]
a.sort_by {|h| [h[:bar],h[:foo]]}.reverse
 => [{:foo=>2, :bar=>1}, {:foo=>1, :bar=>1}]
7
votes

What about: 

 a.sort {|x,y| y[:bar]<=>x[:bar]}

It works!!

irb
>> a = [
?>   { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 2 },
?>   { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 3 },
?>   { :foo => 'foo', :bar => 5 },
?> ]
=> [{:bar=>2, :foo=>"foo"}, {:bar=>3, :foo=>"foo"}, {:bar=>5, :foo=>"foo"}]

>>  a.sort {|x,y| y[:bar]<=>x[:bar]}
=> [{:bar=>5, :foo=>"foo"}, {:bar=>3, :foo=>"foo"}, {:bar=>2, :foo=>"foo"}]
3
votes

Regarding the benchmark suite mentioned, these results also hold for sorted arrays.

sort_by/reverse it is:

# foo.rb
require 'benchmark'

NUM_RUNS = 1000

# arr = []
arr1 = 3000.times.map { { num: rand(1000) } }
arr2 = 3000.times.map { |n| { num: n } }.reverse

Benchmark.bm(20) do |x|
  { 'randomized'     => arr1,
    'sorted'         => arr2 }.each do |label, arr|
    puts '---------------------------------------------------'
    puts label

    x.report('sort_by / reverse') {
      NUM_RUNS.times { arr.sort_by { |h| h[:num] }.reverse }
    }
    x.report('sort_by -') {
      NUM_RUNS.times { arr.sort_by { |h| -h[:num] } }
    }
  end
end

And the results:

$: ruby foo.rb
                           user     system      total        real
---------------------------------------------------
randomized
sort_by / reverse      1.680000   0.010000   1.690000 (  1.682051)
sort_by -              1.830000   0.000000   1.830000 (  1.830359)
---------------------------------------------------
sorted
sort_by / reverse      0.400000   0.000000   0.400000 (  0.402990)
sort_by -              0.500000   0.000000   0.500000 (  0.499350)
2
votes

Simple Solution from ascending to descending and vice versa is:

STRINGS

str = ['ravi', 'aravind', 'joker', 'poker']
asc_string = str.sort # => ["aravind", "joker", "poker", "ravi"]
asc_string.reverse # => ["ravi", "poker", "joker", "aravind"]

DIGITS

digit = [234,45,1,5,78,45,34,9]
asc_digit = digit.sort # => [1, 5, 9, 34, 45, 45, 78, 234]
asc_digit.reverse # => [234, 78, 45, 45, 34, 9, 5, 1]
1
votes

For those folks who like to measure speed in IPS ;)

require 'benchmark/ips'

ary = []
1000.times { 
  ary << {:bar => rand(1000)} 
}

Benchmark.ips do |x|
  x.report("sort")               { ary.sort{ |a,b| b[:bar] <=> a[:bar] } }
  x.report("sort reverse")       { ary.sort{ |a,b| a[:bar] <=> b[:bar] }.reverse }
  x.report("sort_by -a[:bar]")   { ary.sort_by{ |a| -a[:bar] } }
  x.report("sort_by a[:bar]*-1") { ary.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar]*-1 } }
  x.report("sort_by.reverse!")   { ary.sort_by{ |a| a[:bar] }.reverse }
  x.compare!
end

And results:

Warming up --------------------------------------
                sort    93.000  i/100ms
        sort reverse    91.000  i/100ms
    sort_by -a[:bar]   382.000  i/100ms
  sort_by a[:bar]*-1   398.000  i/100ms
    sort_by.reverse!   397.000  i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
                sort    938.530  (± 1.8%) i/s -      4.743k in   5.055290s
        sort reverse    901.157  (± 6.1%) i/s -      4.550k in   5.075351s
    sort_by -a[:bar]      3.814k (± 4.4%) i/s -     19.100k in   5.019260s
  sort_by a[:bar]*-1      3.732k (± 4.3%) i/s -     18.706k in   5.021720s
    sort_by.reverse!      3.928k (± 3.6%) i/s -     19.850k in   5.060202s

Comparison:
    sort_by.reverse!:     3927.8 i/s
    sort_by -a[:bar]:     3813.9 i/s - same-ish: difference falls within error
  sort_by a[:bar]*-1:     3732.3 i/s - same-ish: difference falls within error
                sort:      938.5 i/s - 4.19x  slower
        sort reverse:      901.2 i/s - 4.36x  slower