Sorting multidimensional array in Delphi 2007 - string

Question

I have a multidimensional array similar to the one described below:
Matrix => array(
[0] => array( [0] => 7, [1] => 'hello' ),
[1] => array( [0] => 3, [1] => 'there' ),
[2] => array( [0] => 1, [1] => 'world' ),
)
What I'm trying to achieve is to sort this array using the values of Matrix[i][0]. What would be the most efficient way to do this? I looked into the recursive QuickSort function possibility, but it's rather complicated as I'm multidimensional arrays. There are many examples of quicksort, but none of them handle taking an "Array of Array of String" as an input.
Please ask for clarification if my text seems gibberish. I'm still fairly new to Delphi.

Answer 1

As Rob pointed out in his comment, there's no way to have an multi-dimensional array that stores both integers and strings (without resorting to variants).
If it's really just an array containing integer/string pairs, it would be much easier to store them in a TStringList using the Strings and Objects properties, and then use CustomSort to sort on the Object values:
program Project2;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses
SysUtils, Classes;
function MySortProc(List: TStringList; Index1, Index2: Integer): Integer;
begin
Result := Integer(List.Objects[Index1]) - Integer(List.Objects[Index2]);
end;
var
SL: TStringList;
i: Integer;
begin
SL := TStringList.Create;
try
for i := 0 to 10 do
SL.AddObject(Format('Item %d', [i]), TObject(Random(i)));
SL.CustomSort(#MySortProc);
for i := 0 to SL.Count - 1 do
WriteLn(Format('%d: %s', [Integer(SL.Objects[i]), SL[i]]));
ReadLn;
finally
SL.Free;
end;
end.
This produces

Answer 2

First of all I question whether or not you have chosen the correct type to represent your data structure. You say your type is
array of array of string
But it looks like the inner array always has exactly two elements, the first an integer, and the second a string. In that case the inner array should be replaced with a record.
type
TMyElement = record
ID: Integer;
Name: string;
end;
TMyArray = array of TMyElement;
And now you just have a one dimensional array. I assume you have no difficulty sorting one of those.
But suppose that you really did need a multi-dimensional array. Suppose that the array was ragged, i.e. that different inner arrays had different lengths. You can still view that array as a one-dimensional array. Declare it like this:
TStringArray = array of string;
TMyArray = array of TStringArray;
Now you can sort TMyArray just as if it were a one-dimensional array.
Note that I needed to declare a type for the inner array. The reason being that the sort function needs to be able to compare and exchange elements of the outer array. So you'll need functions to do that. And you need to define a type to achieve that. For example, your exchange function might look like this:
procedure Exchange(Index1, Index2: Integer);
var
temp: TStringArray;
begin
temp := MyArray[Index1];
MyArray[Index1] := MyArray[Index2];
MyArray[Index2] := temp;
end;
Without defining TStringArray, this would not be possible. That's because of the rather stringent assignment compatibility rules for dynamic arrays.
You can extend to as many dimensions as you like:
TString2DArray = array of TStringArray;
TMyArray = array of TString2DArray;
Again, you can use your standard array sort to sort this three dimensional version of TMyArray.