how to sort a list but ignore a special character

[rgately]

Greetings,

I have a list that needs to be sorted alphabetically. That's easy enough using SortCaseInsensitive. But I need to ignore a particular character when it's present. And when it's present, it is always the first character in a list item. I use the special character to mark a list item for use elsewhere.

Here's an example of a list with 4 items. 2 of them have markers (*)

* This is a list item
and this is a list item
this is another list item
* here is another list item

Is there a sort algorithm that would ignore the * (when it's present)?
Or, is there a character(s) that would be ignored in a sort?
If not, what should I be looking at doing?

Thanks

 

[Erel]

I think that the problem is in the way you combine the data and data state in the same list.

You can use a list for the items and a Map that maps between the items and their state.

 

[rgately]

Thanks Erel,

I'll try to see the solution from that perspective.