How do I order a list so that it is in alphabetical order?
Any help would be appreciated!
I used the first handler shown at the top of the thread, however it returns nothing at all.
hi magikseb,
the sorterscript published on macosxautomation.com works fine too, but be careful: it converts every item of a list to a string … (by default …)
set the composer_list to {"Ellington", "Copland", "Bach", "Mozart"}
simple_sort(the composer_list)
on simple_sort(my_list)
set the index_list to {}
set the sorted_list to {}
repeat (the number of items in my_list) times
set the low_item to ""
repeat with i from 1 to (number of items in my_list)
if i is not in the index_list then
set this_item to item i of my_list as text
if the low_item is "" then
set the low_item to this_item
set the low_item_index to i
else if this_item comes before the low_item then
set the low_item to this_item
set the low_item_index to i
end if
end if
end repeat
set the end of sorted_list to the low_item
set the end of the index_list to the low_item_index
end repeat
return the sorted_list
end simple_sort
Thanks both of you! I found that the handler from http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?pid=64115#p64115 from the thread you suggested Stefan worked great!
Hans-Gerd the handler you suggested works brilliantly too, is very short and is great for what I need 
Problem solved
It’s not meant to return anything, but to sort the list you pass to it:
set yourList to {5, 99, -273, 2000, 4}
Qsort(yourList, 1, (count yourList))
yourList --> {-273, 4, 5, 99, 2000}
hi magikseb,
and never forget about the shell (to get it short) 
set thelist to {"Ellington", "Copland", "Bach", "Mozart", 5}
set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "\n"
set thelist to paragraphs of (do shell script "echo " & quoted form of (thelist as text) & " | sort" & " -f -b") --have a look for the options in the man-page ...
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid
Hans
The shell sort command is useful, but it’s very limited. It doesn’t handle accented or non-ASCII characters properly, and it’s order even for things like punctuation might not be what you expect (it sorts in simple ASCII-number order).