Array with multiple linked objects in Unity

Question

This might be too primitive, but for my use case, I need to maintain an array in which two attributes are linked to each other... For example - If I want to do Score gathering... Then I need an array which has scores and corresponding player names as each element.

So, when I do Array.Sort(PlayerScorearray) I even need the playername to be sorted in the order so that if I want to know the player with lowest score, I just go for the first element and then go to the corresponding player name.. Is it possible to do it in a simpler way? My mind can't think of a simple way to do this.

Edit : I am using C# for scripts

Answer 1

Two ways to do this:

1. Make a tuple type that combines both pieces of information

   public struct ScoreEntry { public string playerName; public float score; }

   Then you can sort them using a custom comparer, like so:

   Array.Sort(scoreEntries, (ScoreEntry a, ScoreEntry b) => { return a.score - b.score; } );

   Or, to be more concise, you can make your ScoreEntry implement IComparable so that the default Sort knows how to sort them without this helper. ;)

2. You can use the Array.Sort overload that takes two arrays and sorts them in parallel:

   Array.Sort(scores, playerNames);

   (In my experience, this method is not very efficient, but your mileage may vary)

Both these strategies are easily found by reviewing the MSDN documentation on sorting or doing a simple Google search (sorting is a pretty bread-and-butter operation, so there's tons of information out there about how to tackle it) - so please don't neglect to do your own research.