Array.sort browser differences

July 25, 2009 • 1 min read


WebKit says, "Boolean comparison functions? What the farmer?"Javascript’s Array class has a handy function, sort(). You just pass in any comparison function, and it will sort the array for you. Therefore, the following code works:

[3,1,4,2,5].sort(function(a,b) {
    return a > b;
});

Or rather, it works in Firefox: it sorts the array to [1,2,3,4,5]. In IE, it seems to work at first glance: the 2 is out of place in the output. In Safari and Chrome, nothing changes at all. That’s because Webkit requires the comparison function to return an integer rather than a boolean, otherwise it does nothing with no error. The correct code is:

[3,1,4,2,5].sort(function(a,b) {
    return a - b;
});

This will work in all browsers. Something to keep in mind if you ever get a “Sorting doesn’t work in WebKit” bug and are scratching your head.


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