Re: [Orgmode] Useful utility function: org-sort-multi

[Carsten Dominik]

On Aug 29, 2009, at 3:38 AM, Ryan C. Thompson wrote:

> I found myself having to sort by multiple criteria, and I was doing  
> it with multiple calls to org-sort-entries-or-items. Then I decided  
> to abstract the repetition into a function. Here it is:
>
> (defun org-sort-multi (&rest sort-types)
>  "Sort successively by a list of criteria, in descending order of  
> importance.
> For example, sort first by TODO status, then by priority, then by  
> date, then alphabetically, case-sensitive.
> Each criterion is either a character or a cons pair (BOOL . CHAR),  
> where BOOL is whether or not to sort case-sensitively, and CHAR is  
> one of the characters defined in ``org-sort-entries-or-items''.
> So, the example above could be accomplished with:
> (org-sort-multi ?o ?p ?t (t . ?a))"
>  (interactive)
>  (mapc #'(lambda (sort-type)
>            (when (characterp sort-type) (setq sort-type (cons nil  
> sort-type)))
>            (org-sort-entries-or-items (car sort-type) (cdr sort- 
> type)))
>        (reverse sort-types)))
>
> Note the call to reverse. This makes it so that the first criterion  
> you provide is the dominant criterion. Try it out to see how it  
> works, and let me know if there's a better way to pass the arguments.
>
> Just as an example, the particular sorting function I wanted to  
> write now becomes this:
>
> (defun org-sort-custom ()
>  "Sort children of node by todo status and by priority and by date,  
> so the * TODO [#A] items with latest dates go to the top."
>  (interactive)
>  (org-sort-multi ?o ?p ?T))


Hi Ryan,

this looks interesting, but I am not sure I understand how it works.
It looks to me that each sorting step will completely re-sort the entire
list of items, so the final sorting will win in the end.

Or am I missing something here?

- Carsten


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