http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/ObjC_classic/Classes/NSSortDescriptor.html

NSSortDescriptor is Apple’s rather confusing class, used for sorting arrays, tables, and pretty much anything else. It works based on three pieces of input: a sort key, ascending or descending, and a comparator selector. The sort descriptor first will use KVC to find the value of the key on each element, then call the comparator ( compare:) on each value to figure out where it will end up in the final (sorted) array, table, etc. It is probably at least slightly more efficient than this description, i.e., not calling compare: for every single object.

Please help fix up this page, because right now this is not very helpful.

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How can I sort my table column by filename? Right now, if I sort the values (NSStrings) normally, the objects in different folders are placed differently. Example:

JavaClassA.java JavaClassB.java ObjCClass1.h ObjCClass1.m JavaClassC.java ObjCClass2.h ObjCClass2.m

This is definitely not the order I want. The reason for this weird sort? I used an NSFormatter subclass to cut off the path, except for when editing the values. But the table sorts by the full path, not the truncated one ( lastPathComponent, actually). How can I tell the table column (preferably in IB) to sort by the filename only, and ignore the full path? Thanks, JediKnil