Sorting Characters Of A C++ String

Question

If i have a string is there a built in function to sort the characters or would I have to write my own?

for example:

string word = "dabc";

I would want to change it so that:

string sortedWord = "abcd";

Maybe using char is a better option? How would I do this in C++?

Note that any sort of naive char value based sorting breaks with UTF-8 -- depending on your strings you might want to take the locale into consideration. — Christian Severin
– Christian Severin, Commented Nov 17, 2017 at 10:44

R. Martinho Fernandes · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-02 05:24:14Z

190

There is a sorting algorithm in the standard library, in the header <algorithm>. It sorts inplace, so if you do the following, your original word will become sorted.

std::sort(word.begin(), word.end());

If you don't want to lose the original, make a copy first.

std::string sortedWord = word;
std::sort(sortedWord.begin(), sortedWord.end());

answered Feb 2, 2012 at 5:24

R. Martinho Fernandes

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3 Comments

The Room Over a year ago

What if we want the string to sorted in increasing order?

Tommy Over a year ago

@madhuspot std::sort sorts in alphabetically-increasing order by default. Supposing that's a minor typo and you want decreasing order, use the version of std::sort that takes a Compare as its third argument and supply std::greater instead of the default std::less. std::string uses the char type by default so e.g. std::sort(sortedWord.begin(), sortedWord.end(), std::greater<char>()); — that would give a result of "dcba" in the original question rather than "abcd".

Vincent Over a year ago

@madhuspot or use std::reverse

dreamlax · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-02 05:23:16Z

18

std::sort(str.begin(), str.end());

See here

answered Feb 2, 2012 at 5:23

dreamlax

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1 Comment

Ben Voigt Over a year ago

This is the best way... IF the string is using a single byte encoding. Otherwise you'll break apart characters into their component bytes.

abe312 · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-22 02:34:47Z

4

You have to include sort function which is in algorithm header file which is a standard template library in c++.

Usage: std::sort(str.begin(), str.end());

#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>  // this header is required for std::sort to work
int main()
{
    std::string s = "dacb";
    std::sort(s.begin(), s.end());
    std::cout << s << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

OUTPUT:

abcd

edited Dec 22, 2015 at 2:34

answered Nov 18, 2015 at 1:23

abe312

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Comments

rashedcs · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-06 09:41:37Z

2

You can use sort() function. sort() exists in algorithm header file

        #include<bits/stdc++.h>
        using namespace std;


        int main()
        {
            ios::sync_with_stdio(false);
            string str = "sharlock";

            sort(str.begin(), str.end());
            cout<<str<<endl;

            return 0;
        }

Output:

achklors

answered Jul 6, 2017 at 9:41

rashedcs

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