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how to order a List<Dictionary<String,object>> the object contains only string

the dictionary is structured as below

[name: mario]
[surname: rossi]
[address: xxxxxx]
[age: 40]
i'd like to order the list of these dictionaries by "age"
may you help me please?
i've tried with:
myList.Select(x => x.OrderBy(y=>y.Value)) 
it gives me this error: the value isn't a string(ok i aggree with him, it's an object, i've to cast in some way)
but more important is that i can't tell to the "orderby" methods that it must order by age
                If I understand correctly, the dictionary contains 4 items? Or is it that each item has these 4 properties?
– Oded
                Nov 13, 2012 at 10:08
                You can order each dictionary by age, Doesn't make sense to order the list by it though unless each dictionary only contains objects with the same age?
– Tony Hopkinson
                Nov 13, 2012 at 10:11
                @Tony you can't order the contents of a dictionary (a dictionary is unordered), and ordering the dictionaries themselves is ordering the list; why can't you order the list?
– Marc Gravell
                Nov 13, 2012 at 10:13
                @MarcGravell It would appear that I put in different interpretation on the question. I read it as each object having those four properties, not each dictionary having those four keys. Lets hope my intepretation as wrong for all the boys who've amassed some points off this...
– Tony Hopkinson
                Nov 13, 2012 at 17:14
You want something along the lines of
var sorted = myList.OrderBy(dict => Convert.ToInt32(dict["age"]));
I 've used Convert.ToInt32 defensively because there's a small chance you are using another data type for the age, and casting (unboxing) to the wrong type would throw an exception.
However! It would be much easier if you used a proper type instead of the dictionary; then it would just be:
myList.Sort((x,y) => x.Age.CompareTo(y.Age));
        
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