How to sort strings in foreign languages?

B Vinoth Raj
Jan 20, 2022

Sorting an array of strings in English language is prettry straightforward: use the Array’s sort function. But for non-English languages like German, Spanish, etc., it may produce incorrect results.

Let us take an example of sorting strings in Spanish language.

let spanishWords = ['único','árbol', 'cosas', 'fútbol'];
spanishWords.sort(); 
// ["cosas", "fútbol", "árbol", "único"] which is incorrect order

To correctly compare, here are two options:

Option 1:
Using localeCompare function

spanishWords.sort((a,b) => {
  return a.localeCompare(b, 'es');
})
// ["árbol", "cosas", "fútbol", "único"]

localeCompare in MDN

Option 2:
The Intl.Collator object enables language-sensitive string comparison.

spanishWords.sort(new Intl.Collator('es').compare);
// ["árbol", "cosas", "fútbol", "único"]

NOTE: The Intl object is the namespace for the ECMAScript Internationalization API, which provides language sensitive string comparison, number formatting, and date and time formatting.

Collator in MDN

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