I wrote the following before finding the delightful Sort::Naturally library function.
I recommend using that over what I've done, but maybe people are curious how it might be done.
Or maybe someone needs to fine-tune or customize it.
The following code is not efficient. In particular,
the calling of naturalSortInner with $a and $b as arguments completely eliminates the efficiency of having $a and $b.
However, it was necessary for the recursive nature of naturalSortInner.
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub naturalSortInner {
$x = uc( shift );
$y = uc( shift );
if( !($x =~ /\d+(\.\d+)?/) ) {
return $x cmp $y;
}
$xBefore = $`;
$xMatch = $&;
$xAfter = $';
if( !($y =~ /\d+(\.\d+)?/) ) {
return $x cmp $y;
}
if( $xBefore eq $` ) {
if( $xMatch == $& ) {
return naturalSortInner( $xAfter, $' );
} else {
return $xMatch <=> $&;
}
} else {
return $x cmp $y;
}
print "\n<before: '$xBefore', match: '$xMatch', after: '$xAfter'>\
+n";
}
sub naturalSort {
naturalSortInner( $a, $b );
}
@arr = (
'beta',
'Alpha',
'Gamma1',
'Gamma',
'23',
'5',
'Version1',
'Version1.1',
'Version1.2',
'Version11.1-Sub1',
'Version11.1-Sub10',
'Version11.1-Sub3',
'x23sub5',
'Version2',
'Version2.1',
'GammaGlobulin',
'Gamma10',
'c',
'Gamma2',
'Gamma3',
);
print join( "\n", sort naturalSort @arr ) . "\n";
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