Help with glossary

[peterswan]

Hello,
I need to create a glossary that has a group header for each letter of the alphabet and each acronym and its definition listed under the correct header for the first letter of the acronym. Within each group, I'd like to have the acronyms in alphabetical order.

What I'd like to do is create an array and add the acronyms and their definitions into the array, then sort the array alphabetically, and then loop through the array to display the values.

So far I've created the array and its values, however, I can't get it to sort by text because I've created the array like this:

<cfset acronyms = ArrayNew(1)>

<cfset acronyms[ArrayLen(acronyms) + 1][1] = "OU">
<cfset acronyms[ArrayLen(acronyms)][2] = "Oklahoma University">
<cfset acronyms[ArrayLen(acronyms) + 1][1] = "UK">
<cfset acronyms[ArrayLen(acronyms)][2] = "University of Kansas">

The ArraySort function doesn't know how to sort anything that has two elements for each row. What I want it to do is sort by the first element (the acronym). Then somehow I want to loop through it.

What I'm doing now is looping through the alphabet and then outputting the values of the array like this:

<cfloop list="#alphabet#" index="idx">
<cfoutput>#idx#<br></cfoutput>
<cfloop from="1" to="#ArrayLen(acronyms)#" index="idx2">
<cfif left(acronyms[idx2][1], 1) is idx>
<cfoutput>#acronyms[idx2][1]# &nbsp; #acronyms[idx2][2]#<br></cfoutput>
</cfif>
</cfloop>
</cfloop>

This works fine except:

1. It won't sort the values within each alphabet letter.
2. It's not very efficent. I have to loop through the entire list of acronyms for each letter of the alphabet.

What I'd like to do is append each new acronym / definition onto the array, then sort it by text, then loop through it to display it.

Any ideas?

Peter