E11026: references not in alphabetical order - reorder for consistency

What went wrong

The 'references' block contains module references that are not in alphabetical order. EK9 requires references to be sorted alphabetically for consistency and readability.

WHY ALPHABETICAL ORDER?

1. FASTER SCANNING: Developers can quickly find or verify a reference exists
2. REDUCED MERGE CONFLICTS: Alphabetical order minimizes VCS conflicts
3. AI-FRIENDLY: Consistent patterns help AI tools understand and generate code
4. PROFESSIONAL STANDARD: Industry tools (IDEs, linters) enforce import ordering

EXAMPLE (Error):

references
  com.example.util.Helper      // ✗ 'util' comes after 'service' alphabetically
  com.example.service.Client   // ✗ Out of order
  com.example.data.Model       // ✗ Out of order

EXAMPLE (Correct):

references
  com.example.data.Model       // ✓ 'data' comes first
  com.example.service.Client   // ✓ 'service' comes next
  com.example.util.Helper      // ✓ 'util' comes last

To fix

Reorder your references alphabetically by the full qualified name (case-insensitive).

Sorting rules

• Compare full qualified names (e.g., 'com.example.data.Model')
• Case-insensitive comparison
• Shorter prefixes come before longer ones
• Numbers sort before letters

Automation

Most IDEs can auto-sort imports/references. AI assistants can also reorder for you.

Examples

Every example is compiled by the EK9 compiler: the first fails exactly as captioned, the others fix it.

Fails with E11026: references not in alphabetical order - reorder for consistency

#!ek9
defines module error.e11026.bad

  references
    org.ek9.lang::String
    org.ek9.lang::Integer

  defines function

    describe()
      -> count as Integer
      <- rtn as String: $count

Fixed: List the references in alphabetical order

#!ek9
defines module error.e11026.good

  references
    org.ek9.lang::Integer
    org.ek9.lang::String

  defines function

    describe()
      -> count as Integer
      <- rtn as String: $count