Wiley-World.of.Warcraft.Programming.A.Guide.and.Reference.for.Creating.WoW.Addons

Chapter 5 ■ Advanced Functions and Control Structures 89stack traceback:[C]: in function 'sort'stdin:1: in main chunk[C]: ?The table.sort() function takes a second argument specifically for thispurpose, to allow the programmer to define how values should be compared.This function takes two arguments, and returns true if the first argument isless than the second argument, and false if the second argument is less thanor equal to the first argument. That means you can sort two tables based ontheir member fields, or some other criteria you specify. Write the followingfunction, which will compare two of the elements based on name:function sortNameFunction(a, b)return a.name < b.nameendAlthough the function is extremely short, that’s all that is required to sort thearray by name. Pass this function in as the second argument to table.sort():> table.sort(guild, sortNameFunction)> for idx, value in ipairs(guild) do>> print(idx, value.name)>> end1, Cladhaire2, Deathsquid3, DraoiTo reverse the sort order, just reverse the order of the comparison (note thatthe position of b.name and a.name inthecomparisonhavechanged):function sortNameFunctionDesc(a, b)return b.name < a.nameendSort with this new function:> table.sort(guild, sortNameFunctionDesc)> for idx, value in ipairs(guild) do print(idx, value.name) end1, Draoi2, Deathsquid3, CladhaireCreating a More Complex Sort FunctionAssume you’d like to sort the preceding data by level and then by charactername. You can write a function to sort by level, but there’s no way to tell in