Sorting on text but ignoring the some characters

ALex/All,

I have text column declared as string which has data like this

ORACLE
MSFT
--
--

The "--" is there in the grid where there are no stocks in the column.
When I sort on this column then sorting looks like

--
--
MSFT
ORACLE

How to ignore the string or character like "--" while doing sorting..
So the actual data rows would always come like below

MSFT
ORACLE
--
--

or

ORACLE
MSFT
--
--

This is urgent issue in AW2.5.4 we implemented in production...

Thanks & Regards

You'll need to write a custom sort routine. I did something similar last year. This should help you -

var     obj    = new AW.UI.Grid

var     SpecialSort     = AW.Formats.String.subclass()

SpecialSort.create = function()

{

                var     obj     = this.prototype



                obj.comparator = function(values, greater, less, equal, error)

                {

                    return function(i, j)

                    {

                        try

                        {

                            var a = values[i], b = values[j]



                            if (a.indexOf("--") < 0 && b.indexOf("--") < 0)

                            {

                                if (a > b) {return greater}

                                if (a < b) {return less}

                                return equal(i, j)

                            }



                            if (a.indexOf("--") == 0)

                            {

                                return greater == 1 ? greater : less

                            }

                            return greater == 1 ? less : greater

                        }

                        catch(e){return error(i, j, e)}

                    }

                }

}

obj.setCellFormat(new SpecialSort, <column position>)

Replace "<column position>" with the number of your target column.

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