$result := sort [ --key|:k expression ] --compare|:c perl-code expression$result := sort [ --key|:k expression ] [ --numeric|:n ] [ --descending|:d ] [ --locale|:l] expression

This command sorts a given node-list, returning a node-list ordered according to a given key and ordering function.

--key|:k followed by an expression specifies the key to be computed for each member of the node-list and the result used as the sorting key. If omitted, keys are created by converting the nodes to string as if XPath expression string(.) was used.

--numeric|:n specifies, that keys should be compared by their numerical values (the default is string comparison).

--descending|:d specifies, that the result should be ordered in descending order (default is ascending).

--locale|:l forces using current locale settings for string comparison (default is no locale).

--compare argument followed by a perl-code allows to define a custom comparison method in a similar way to Perl sort command. The keys to be compared are passed to the code in variables $a and $b. The code is supposed to return 1 if the key in $a is greater than $b, 0 if the keys are equal and -1 if $a is less than $b, depending on how the corresponding elements are to be ordered. It is a run-time error to use --compare together with either --numeric or --descending.

$ordered := sort --key xsh:lc(.) $unordered;

perl {
# setup locale collating function
# Note, that the collating function must be UTF8 aware.
use POSIX qw(locale_h);
setlocale(LC_COLLATE,'cs_CZ.UTF-8');
};

xmove &{ sort :k@name :l * } into /middle-earth[1]/creatures;

$results := sort --numeric --descending --key { $scores{literal('@name')} } $players;