Try this version:

var arrays = [
  ['Ethan', '[email protected]', '[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
  ['David', '[email protected]', '[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
  ['Lily', '[email protected]', '[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
  ['Gabe', '[email protected]', '[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
  ['Ethan', '[email protected]', '[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
];

arrays.sort((arrA, arrB) => arrA[0].localeCompare(arrB[0]));
console.log(arrays);

The best approach would be to use the following, as there may be repetitive values in the first column.

var arr = [[12, 'AAA'], [12, 'BBB'], [12, 'CCC'],[28, 'DDD'], [18, 'CCC'],[12, 'DDD'],[18, 'CCC'],[28, 'DDD'],[28, 'DDD'],[58, 'BBB'],[68, 'BBB'],[78, 'BBB']];

arr.sort(function(a,b) {
    return a[0]-b[0]
});

Array.prototype.sort function expects a function as a parameter, which accepts two parameters and returns any of -1, 0 or 1.

I am a very big fan of functional programming, so I came up with this. This offers flexibility.

1. You can sort based on any element
2. You can even reverse the order of sorting
3. You can customize, how the objects have to be compared.

function basicComparator(first, second) {
    if (first === second) {
        return 0;
    } else if (first < second) {
        return -1;
    } else {
        return 1;
    }
}

function compareNthElements(n, comparatorFunction, reverse) {
    return function(first, second) {
        if (reverse === true) {
            return comparatorFunction(second[n], first[n]);
        } else {
            return comparatorFunction(first[n], second[n]);
        }
    }
}

Thats it. Now, call the sort function like this

arry.sort(compareNthElements(1, basicComparator, true));  // Sorts first field and in reverse
arry.sort(compareNthElements(2, basicComparator));        // Sorts second field

Suppose you have an array users. You may use users.sort and pass a function that takes two arguments and compare them (comparator)

It should return

• something negative if first argument is less than second (should be placed before the second in resulting array)
• something positive if first argument is greater (should be placed after second one)
• 0 if those two elements are equal.

In our case if two elements are a and b we want to compare a.firstname and b.firstname

Example:

users.sort(function(a, b){
    if(a.firstname < b.firstname) { return -1; }
    if(a.firstname > b.firstname) { return 1; }
    return 0;
})

This code is going to work with any type.

Note that in "real life"™ you often want to ignore case, correctly sort diacritics, weird symbols like ß, etc. when you compare strings, so you may want to use localeCompare. See other answers for clarity.