Question: What is the largest open source project written in Visual C++ ?

I can see that eMule project is pretty big, but what is largest?

Answer: 
Put the preferred values in a dictionary. Looking up keys in a dictionary is a O(1) operation compared to finding values in a list which is a O(n) operation, so it scales much better.

Create a sort string for each preferred value so that they are placed before the other values. For the other values the value itself will be used as sorting string so that they are actually sorted. (Using any arbitrary high value would only place them at the end of the list unsorted).

```
List<string> data = new List<string> {
    "E", "B", "D", "A", "C", "B", "A", "C"
};
var preferences = new Dictionary<string, string> {
    { "A", " 01" },
    { "B", " 02" },
    { "C", " 03" }
};

string key;
IEnumerable<String> orderedData = data.OrderBy(
    item => preferences.TryGetValue(item, out key) ? key : item
);

```
Combined all answers (and more) into a generic LINQ extension supporting caching which handles any data type, can be case-insensitive and allows to be chained with pre- and post-ordering:

```
public static class SortBySample
{
    public static BySampleSorter<TKey> Create<TKey>(IEnumerable<TKey> fixedOrder, IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer = null)
    {
        return new BySampleSorter<TKey>(fixedOrder, comparer);
    }

    public static BySampleSorter<TKey> Create<TKey>(IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer, params TKey[] fixedOrder)
    {
        return new BySampleSorter<TKey>(fixedOrder, comparer);
    }

    public static IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> OrderBySample<TSource, TKey>(this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector, BySampleSorter<TKey> sample)
    {
        return sample.OrderBySample(source, keySelector);
    }

    public static IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> ThenBySample<TSource, TKey>(this IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector, BySampleSorter<TKey> sample)
    {
        return sample.ThenBySample(source, keySelector);
    }
}

public class BySampleSorter<TKey>
{
    private readonly Dictionary<TKey, int> dict;

    public BySampleSorter(IEnumerable<TKey> fixedOrder, IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer = null)
    {
        this.dict = fixedOrder
            .Select((key, index) => new KeyValuePair<TKey, int>(key, index))
            .ToDictionary(kv => kv.Key, kv => kv.Value, comparer ?? EqualityComparer<TKey>.Default);
    }

    public BySampleSorter(IEqualityComparer<TKey> comparer, params TKey[] fixedOrder)
        : this(fixedOrder, comparer)
    {
    }

    public IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> OrderBySample<TSource>(IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
    {
        return source.OrderBy(item => this.GetOrderKey(keySelector(item)));
    }

    public IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> ThenBySample<TSource>(IOrderedEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> keySelector)
    {
        return source.CreateOrderedEnumerable(item => this.GetOrderKey(keySelector(item)), Comparer<int>.Default, false);
    }

    private int GetOrderKey(TKey key)
    {
        int index;
        return dict.TryGetValue(key, out index) ? index : int.MaxValue;
    }
}

```

Sample usage using LINQPad-Dump():

```
var sample = SortBySample.Create(StringComparer.OrdinalIgnoreCase, "one", "two", "three", "four");
var unsorted = new[] {"seven", "six", "five", "four", "THREE", "tWo", "One", "zero"};
unsorted
    .OrderBySample(x => x, sample)
    .ThenBy(x => x)
    .Dump("sorted by sample then by content");
unsorted
    .OrderBy(x => x.Length)
    .ThenBySample(x => x, sample)
    .Dump("sorted by length then by sample");

```