Sort, ignore lead chars

In C# programs strings sometimes contain characters that do not matter. These characters can be ignored while sorting.

Sorting details

For example, consider that we can ignore the period on the start of ".NET". The string will be sorted by the N not the period.

This program uses a string array with some values that have leading punctuation. The value "(Z)" is by default sorted by its parenthesis character. The value ".NET" is sorted by the period.

using System;
using System.Linq;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        string[] elements = { "A", "(Z)", ".NET", "NO" };
        {
            var sorted = from element in elements
                         orderby element
                         select element;

            foreach (var element in sorted)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(element);
            }
        }
        Console.WriteLine("---");
        {
            var sorted = from element in elements
                         orderby element.TrimStart('(', '.')
                         select element;
            foreach (var element in sorted)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(element);
            }
        }
    }
}
(Z)
.NET
A
NO
---
A
.NET
NO
(Z)

Discussion

The code here is not optimally fast. If you want to optimize the performance of this method, consider implementing IComparer and using Array.Sort and sorting the array in-place.

Summary

We can implement custom sorts using query expressions. We can sort on mutated strings—such as ones that are stripped of leading characters. This can lead to more naturally sorted arrays.