WBF Academy
Collections Advanced 3 min read

Custom Comparators with compareBy

Sort by multiple fields declaratively

Kotlin Academy

Kotlin Academy

Kotlin Engineer

5 months ago

compareBy creates a Comparator that sorts by one or more selector functions in sequence, while thenBy and thenByDescending add tie-breaking rules. This declarative approach eliminates complex nested comparison logic and is far more readable than manual Comparator implementations. The chain is evaluated lazily: subsequent selectors are only consulted when earlier ones produce equal values.

#kotlin #comparator #sorting #collections