VB.NET Sorting Collection

I suggest to use SortedList:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms132319.aspx

jaime_olivares,

Thanks for the suggestion. But as mentioned, the value to be sorted is not unique. SortedList is sorted by it's key and it must be unique.

what is the data of the values?

.. have you tried using SortedList Class? you just have the to specify the IComparer to be used

the difference is, you will specify a key-value pair when you add an item,
and you will access the data using GetKey(index) which is the same as
ElementAt function

oopss.. late by a few minutes..

there are some tricks you can do with the key, if it is of string type, you can append a sequence number after the key, so every key will be different, but still sortable.

It is of timespan type. Objects will only be added/removed from the collection, but never modified.

I can use a SortedDictionary and store the object as the key and specify the IComparable to sort by the timespan. And the value in the collection will not be used.

Or maybe use a List collection and insert new objects in the correct index.

Thanks for the code. I now see that the key can have duplicates as long as the comparer says they are not the equal.

I have made some changes.

Dim yourSD As New SortedList(Of TSKey, Boolean)
yourSD.Add(New TSKey(ts), Nothing)

I will store the object as the key and nothing as the value so that I will not be storing the same info twice. I changed the collection to SortedList because it has a keys property where I can get its key while passing its index (don't know why that is not possible with a SortedDictionary).

Is there a more appropriate type of collection for this case?

Structure TSKey
    Implements IComparable(Of TSKey)
 
    Private _ts As TimeSpan
 
    Public Function CompareTo(ByVal other As TSKey) As Integer Implements System.IComparable(Of TSKey).CompareTo
        Dim comp As Integer = _ts.CompareTo(other._ts)
        If comp <> 0 Then
            Return comp
        Else
            Return 1
        End If
    End Function
 
    Public Sub New(ByVal ts As TimeSpan)
        _ts = ts
    End Sub
 
End Structure

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there is not a better ready made class, so, I think that's the best you can have, unless you write your own collection class.

Thanks