Sort an array to have specific items first in the array

A simpler and more elegant way to do is by building a new array by filtering the old one twice: once filtered by flag: true and once by flag: false. All together it would look like:

// THE INITIAL ARRAY:
const originalArray = [
    {flag: true, other: 1},
    {flag: true, other: 2},
    {flag: false, other: 3},
    {flag: true, other: 4},
    {flag: true, other: 5},
    {flag: true, other: 6},
    {flag: false, other: 7}
];

// THE SORTED ARRAY:
const sortedArray = [
    ...originalArray.filter(({flag}) => flag),
    ...originalArray.filter(({flag}) => !flag)
];

In my opinion it is way easier for a human to read than using comparer or reducer functions, and (based on measurements) it is also a pretty well-performing solution.

---

A performance comparison:

I saw that the most upvoted answer using arr.reduce() performs around 20x slower than this solution. I used ES6 Console for comparison, feel free to test it yourself too!

Measuring the array.reduce() way:

const arr = [
  { flag: true, other: 1 },
  { flag: true, other: 2 },
  { flag: false, other: 3 },
  { flag: true, other: 4 },
  { flag: true, other: 5 },
  { flag: true, other: 6 },
  { flag: false, other: 7 }
];

// Lets multiple the array items 11 times to increase the looping process:
new Array(11).fill().forEach(x => arr.push(...arr));

console.time();

const reducedArr = arr.reduce((acc, element) => {
  if (element.flag === false) {
    return [element, ...acc];
  }
  return [...acc, element];
}, []);

console.timeEnd(); // RESULTS: between 285-350ms

Measuring the array.filter() way:

const arr = [
  { flag: true, other: 1 },
  { flag: true, other: 2 },
  { flag: false, other: 3 },
  { flag: true, other: 4 },
  { flag: true, other: 5 },
  { flag: true, other: 6 },
  { flag: false, other: 7 }
];

// Lets multiple the array items 11 times to increase the looping process:
new Array(11).fill().forEach(x => arr.push(...arr));

console.time();

const rebuiltArray = [
  ...arr.filter(x => x.flag),
  ...arr.filter(x => !x.flag)
];

console.timeEnd(); // RESULTS: between 6-20ms

The Spread syntax introduced with ECMAScript6 (e.g., [...object]) makes this relatively straightforward using an Array's reduce method:

const arr = [
  { flag: true, other: 1 },
  { flag: true, other: 2 },
  { flag: false, other: 3 },
  { flag: true, other: 4 },
  { flag: true, other: 5 },
  { flag: true, other: 6 },
  { flag: false, other: 7 }
];

const sortedArr = arr.reduce((acc, element) => {
  if (!element.flag) {
    return [element, ...acc];
  }
  return [...acc, element];
}, []);

I found this example of extended parameter handling really helpful.