API sort — wowpedia

Sort the array portion of a table in-place (i.e. alter the table).

table.sort(table [, compFunc])
sort(table[, compFunc])

Arguments

table: Table - Table the array portion of which you wish to sort.
compFunc: Optional Function - Comparison operator function; the function is passed two arguments (a, b) from the table, and should return a boolean value indicating whether a should appear before b in the sorted array. If omitted, the following comparison function is used:

function (a, b)
 return a < b
end

> t = { 3,2,5,1,4 }
> table.sort(t)
> = table.concat(t, ", ")  -- display sorted values
1, 2, 3, 4, 5

A comparison function can be provided to customise the element sorting. For instance, to sort the elements in descending order:

> function isGreaterThan(a, b) return a > b end
> table.sort(t, isGreaterThan)
> = table.concat(t, ", ")
5, 4, 3, 2, 1

Only the array portion of the table -- integer indices from 1 to #table -- will be affected by this function.
The default comparison function will only work propertly if all values stored in the table are numbers, or if all values stored in the table are strings.
The iteration order over key/value pairs in a hash table (using pairs) is undefined. If you need to iterate over hash table elements in a specific order, you'll have to extract the keys to a separate table, and sort that. See orderedpairs for an example.