Lua Sort Table By Property

Question

I have not seen any documentation on sorting a table based on a property in the objects of the table, a real world example where I would want to use this is to control when to draw sprites based on the Z position.

Example:

pool[1].z = 500
pool[2].z = 200
-- sort table by Z property
print(pool[1].z) -- prints 200
print(pool[2].z) -- prints 500

Answer 1

You need to use table.sort with a custom function for sorting where you compare the fields you need:

table.sort(pool, function(a, b) return a.z < b.z end)