AS3 sort string alphabetically - arrays

Question

I'm working on a program in which a string contains some words with line breaks between them:
Bob
Mohammed
Alfred
Moses
Tom
etc
What I'm trying to do is sort it alphabetically as such:
Alfred
Bob
Mohammed
Moses
Tom
...
As far as I know, it can only be done in arrays, but is it possible to sort items inside a string?

Answer 1

When there isn't a pre-built function to do something, then just make your own function for it. This is critical to programming in general.
Remember what a string is: it's an array of characters. In ActionScript 3.0, this isn't quite as true within the language's actual syntax, but you can get around it pretty easily. String.charAt() gets you the character at the given index, and you have a whole slew of operations to actually change the order or number of characters in a string.
That being said, since you're just trying to sort individual words, and since they're already one-to-a-line, you can split on the newline character, "\n", which will create an array. Then you sort that array. I don't recall off the top of my head whether an array in AS3 will natively sort strings in alphabetical order - you might want to Google that - but I think it does; if not, then that just goes back to what the first paragraph was saying. Finally you join the array on the same character.
So:
var arr:Array = nameString.split("\n");
// sort the different elements within arr here; each one is one name
nameString = arr.join("\n");

Answer 2

You can create an array out of the string by splitting on the newline character (\n), then sorting it, and converting it back to a string by joining the elements with the same newline character:
var str:String = "Bob\nMohammed\nAlfred\nMoses\nTom";
var sortedString = str.split("\n").sort().join("\n"));