How to sort an array in descending order in Ruby
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.
You could do:
a.sort{|a,b| b[:bar] <=> a[:bar]}
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!