To sort an array of strings in JavaScript, you can use the sort() method on the array object.

// sort array
arr.sort();

Sort the array in ascending order

By default, the sort() method sorts the array in ascending order.

// array of strings
const strArr = ["Helen", "Jack", "Andrew", "Bob"];

// sort array
// in ascending order
strArr.sort();

console.log(strArr); // ["Andrew", "Bob", "Helen", "Jack"]

See this example live in JSBin.

Sort the array in descending order

To sort the array in descending order, you can pass a function to the sort() method to customize its behavior.

This function will get executed on each iteration while sorting the array and will be passed 2 elements,

• The first element is the second element of the current iteration
• The second element is the first element of the current iteration.

Weird. Right! 💀

All we have to is check if the second element is greater than the first element and return:

• -1 if the second element is greater than the first element
• 1 if the second element is not greater than the first element
• 0 to leave both the elements unchanged

Put simply, Returning -1 from the function means to swap the element, and 1 means to not swap the elements.

It can be done like this,

// array of strings
const strArr = ["Helen", "Jack", "Andrew", "Bob"];

// sort array
// in descending order
strArr.sort((a, b) => {
  // convert the elements
  // to lowercase so that we do not
  // have any problem while sorting
  // since capital and small letters
  // have different ascii values
  const aLower = a.toLowerCase();
  const bLower = b.toLowerCase();

  if (aLower > bLower) {
    return -1;
  }

  if (aLower < bLower) {
    return 1;
  }

  return 0;
});

console.log(strArr); // ["Jack", "Helen", "Bob", "Andrew"]

See this example in JSBin.

Some resources if you want to get more information on using various sorting algorithms in JavaScript:

Bubble sort algorithm in JavaScript

Insertion sort algorithm in JavaScript

Selection sort in JavaScript

Merge Sort in JavaScript

Radix sort in JavaScript

Bucket sort in javascript

Shell sort in JavaScript

Heap sort in JavaScript

Counting sort in JavaScript

Feel free to share if you found this useful 😃.

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