Sorting strings in JavaScript

The JavaScript sort method is very useful when we want to sort numbers, or even strings. But when sorting strings, we ought to be careful because the strings might be in different languages. Luckily, there’s a fix for that. It’s called localeCompare:

referenceString.localeCompare(compareString)

The referenceString is the string we want to compare, and the compareString is the string against which we’re compareing. The localeCompare method returns a Number, which may be:

• -1 if the referenceString is sorted before the compareString

• 0 if the two strings are equal

• 1 if the referenceString is sorted after the compareString

Here’s an example:

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const words = ['hello', 'répondre', 'sort', 'déclaré'];



words.sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b)); 

As we can see, some words have certain punctuations. Using localeCompre with sort helps us sort the English and French words in our array successfully. More documentaion can be found here