Sorting data in Visual Basic 6 (VBA)

Logical Bubble Sorting

Logical or natural sorting is an alphabetic sorting except of the multi-digit numeric values which are sorted as a single number.

For example the following logical order ab1, ab2, ab3, ab12 would be different in alphabetical order: ab1, ab12, ab2, ab3. Logical order is used when files are ordered in the Files Explorer.

The following example is sorting the specified string array in the logical order using bubble sorting technique.

asc parameter specifies if the values should be sorted in ascending or descending order:

Dim vSortedArr As Variant
Dim vInputArr as Variant 'array of strings
vSortedArr = BubbleSort(vInputArr, False) 'sorting in descending order

Declare PtrSafe Function StrCmpLogicalW Lib "shlwapi" (ByVal s1 As String, ByVal s2 As String) As Integer

Function BubbleSort(vStrArray As Variant, asc As Boolean) As Variant
    
    Dim swapPos As Integer
    swapPos = IIf(asc, 1, -1)
    
    Dim vResStrArray As Variant
    vResStrArray = vStrArray
    
    Dim i As Integer
    Dim j As Integer
    Dim tempVal As String
    
    For i = 0 To UBound(vResStrArray)
        For j = i To UBound(vResStrArray)
            If StrCmpLogicalW(StrConv(CStr(vResStrArray(i)), vbUnicode), StrConv(CStr(vResStrArray(j)), vbUnicode)) = swapPos Then
                tempVal = vResStrArray(j)
                vResStrArray(j) = vResStrArray(i)
                vResStrArray(i) = tempVal
            End If
        Next
    Next
    
    BubbleSort = vResStrArray
    
End Function