Sorting by Functions (Challenge)

Introduction

This challenge aims to test your ability to sort a collection by something other than its natural order. In this case, we will sort strings by their length instead of alphabetically.

Skills Graph

%%%%{init: {'theme':'neutral'}}%%%% flowchart RL go(("`Go`")) -.-> go/AdvancedTopicsGroup(["`Advanced Topics`"]) go/AdvancedTopicsGroup -.-> go/sorting("`Sorting`") subgraph Lab Skills go/sorting -.-> lab-15427{{"`Sorting by Functions (Challenge)`"}} end

Sorting by Functions

The problem to be solved in this challenge is to implement a custom sort function in Go that sorts a slice of strings by their length.

Requirements

The byLength type should be created as an alias for the []string type.
The sort.Interface should be implemented on the byLength type.
The Len and Swap functions should be implemented on the byLength type.
The Less function should be implemented on the byLength type to hold the actual custom sorting logic.
The main function should convert the original fruits slice to byLength, and then use sort.Sort on that typed slice.

Example

## Running our program shows a list sorted by string
## length, as desired.
$ go run sorting-by-functions.go
[kiwi peach banana]

## By following this same pattern of creating a custom
## type, implementing the three `Interface` methods on that
## type, and then calling sort.Sort on a collection of that
## custom type, we can sort Go slices by arbitrary
## functions.

Summary

In this challenge, we learned how to sort a collection by something other than its natural order. We implemented a custom sort function in Go that sorts a slice of strings by their length.