natural_sort v0.3.0 → Overview → NaturalSort

NaturalSort

Sort a list naturally.

Sort functions will not, generally, sort strings containing numbers the same way a human would.

Given a list:

["a10",  "a05c",  "a1",  "a",  "a2",  "a1a",  "a0",  "a1b",  "a20"]

Applying standard sort will produce

["a", "a0", "a05c", "a1", "a10", "a1a", "a1b", "a2", "a20"]

But applying a natural sort will give:

["a", "a0", "a1", "a1a", "a1b", "a2", "a05c", "a10", "a20"]

Prior art:

VersionEye's naturalsorter gem was the inspiration, with that being based on Martin Pool's natural sorting algorithm, making direct use of the Ruby implementation of the original C version.

Elixir's Version module does a similar thing.

Summary↑

sort(list1)

Sorts a list of strings. This works by leveraging Elixir's Enum.sort_by/3 function, which takes as the second argument a mapping function. Each string is converted into a list of strings and integers. Once in this form, applying the sort function results in a correctly sorted list
sort(list, options \\ [])

Functions

sort(list1)
(function) # ↑

Sorts a list of strings. This works by leveraging Elixir's Enum.sort_by/3 function, which takes as the second argument a mapping function. Each string is converted into a list of strings and integers. Once in this form, applying the sort function results in a correctly sorted list.

Options

There are currently two available options (passed as a keyword list), :direction and case_sensitive.

  • :direction may have a value of :asc or :desc, and defaults to :asc.
  • :case_sensitive may be true or false, and defaults to false.

Examples

iex> NaturalSort.sort(["x2-y7", "x8-y8", "x2-y08", "x2-g8" ])
["x2-g8", "x2-y7", "x2-y08", "x8-y8" ]

iex> NaturalSort.sort(["a5", "a400", "a1"], direction: :desc)
["a400", "a5", "a1"]

iex> NaturalSort.sort(["foo03.z", "foo45.D", "foo06.a", "foo06.A", "foo"], case_sensitive: :true)
["foo", "foo03.z", "foo06.A", "foo06.a", "foo45.D"]

iex> NaturalSort.sort(["foo03.z", "foo45.D", "foo06.a", "foo06.A", "foo"], [case_sensitive: :true, direction: :desc])
["foo45.D", "foo06.a", "foo06.A", "foo03.z", "foo"]
sort(list, options \\ [])
(function) # ↑